Income imputation and the analysis of consumer expenditure data

Monthly Labor Review

Volumn 129, Issue 11, 2006, Pages 11-18

  Fisher, Jonathan D ^a  

^a BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS   (United States)

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EID: 33846003107     PISSN: 00981818     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. See T. I. Garner and L. A. Blanciforti, "Household Income Reporting: An Analysis of U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey Data," Journal of Official Statistics, March 1994, pp. 69-91.
2. All results are population weighted. The data appendix describes the weighting methodology.
3. Rubin, D.B., Multiple Imputation for Nonresponse in Surveys (New York, Wiley & Sons, 1987).
4. Specifically, the quarterly expenditure-outlays variable is named ERANKMTH, and it equals the dollar amount of expenditure outlays made during the last 3 months.
5. For a more detailed description of the BLS imputation procedure, see G. Paulin, S. Tsai, and M. Grance, "Model-Based Multiple Imputation," Paper 210-29, Proceedings of the Twenty-Ninth Annual SAS Users Group International Conference (Cary, NC, SAS Institute Inc., 2004).
6. Officially, 6.2 percent is paid for Old-Age Survivors and Disability Insurance, and 1.45 percent is for Medicare.
7. Consumer Expenditures in 2004, USDL 05-2243 (U.S. Department of Labor), November 29, 2005; available on the Internet at http://www.bls.gov/ news.release/cesan.nrO.htm
8. See, for example, J. M. Rogers and M. Gray, "ce Data: Quintiles of Income versus Quintiles of Outlays," Monthly Labor Review, December 1994, pp. 32-37.
9. J. D. Fisher, D. S. Johnson, J. Marchand, T. Smeeding, and B. B. Torrey, "The Retirement Consumption Conundrum: Evidence from a Consumption Survey," CRR WP 2005-14, (Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, December 2005).
10. Researchers will still have the option to restrict the sample to complete income reporters. The variable identifying which households are complete income reporters is included in the 2004 wave and the 2005 wave of the CE.
11. G. Paulin, "A Changing Market: Expenditures by Hispanic Consumers, Revisited," Monthly Labor Review, August 2003, pp. 12-35;
12. S. Phipps and T. I. Garner, "Are Equivalence Scales the same for the United States and Canada?" Review of Income and Wealth, March 1994, pp. 1-17;
13. O. Attanasio, E. Battistin, and A. Leicester, "Inequality, Poverty, and Their Evolution in the US: Consumption and Income Information in the Consumer Expenditure Survey," Notes prepared for the National Poverty Center's ASPE-Initiated Workshop on Consumption among Low-income families, 2004; available on the Internet at http://www.npc.umich.edu/ research/npc_research/consumption.
14. Garner and Blanciforti find a similar pattern for the ages of complete and incomplete reporters in "Household Income Reporting."
15. Using data from 1991-2004, R. Bavier also finds that mean expenditures are lower for incomplete income reporters. See R. Bavier, "Income and Expenditure Data in Poverty Measurement," unpublished manuscript, 2006.
16. For an example of research that examines consumption inequality, see D. S. Johnson, T. M. Smeeding, and B. B. Torrey, "Economic inequality through the prisms of income and consumption," Monthly Labor Review, April 2005, pp. 11-24.
17. See D. M. Cutler and L. Katz, "Rising Inequality? Changes in the Distribution of Income and Consumption in the 1980's," American Economic Review, May 1992, 546-51;
18. D. T. Slesnick, "Gaining Ground: Poverty in the Postwar United States," Journal of Political Economy, February 1993, pp. 1-38;
19. and M. Federman, T. I. Garner, K. Short, W. B. Cutter IV, J. Kiely, D. Levine, D. McGough, and M. McMillen, "What does it mean to be poor in America?" Monthly Labor Review, May 1996, pp. 3-17.
20. These results are very similar to the ones presented in Attanasio and others, "Inequality, Poverty, and Their Evolution in the US."
21. This again matches the findings of Attanasio and others, Ibid.