IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2501.03015.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Characterizing Measurement Error in the German Socio-Economic Panel Using Linked Survey and Administrative Data

Author

Listed:
  • Nico Thurow

Abstract

This paper exploits the linkage of German administrative social security data (GER: Integrierte Erwerbsbiografien) and survey data from the socio-economic panel (GER: Sozio-\"okonomisches Panel, SOEP) for the characterization of measurement error in metrics quantifying individual-specific labor earnings in Germany. We find that survey participants' decision whether to consent to linkage is non-random based on observables. In that sense, the studied sample does not constitute a random sample of SOEP. Measurement error is not classical: we observe underreporting of income on average, autocorrelation, and non-zero correlation with the true signal and other observable characteristics. In levels, calculated reliability ratios above 0.94 hint at a relaitvely small attenuation bias in simple linear univariate regressions with earnings as the explanatory variable. For changes in income, i.e. first differences, the bias from measurement error is exacerbated.

Suggested Citation

  • Nico Thurow, 2025. "Characterizing Measurement Error in the German Socio-Economic Panel Using Linked Survey and Administrative Data," Papers 2501.03015, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2501.03015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.03015
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2501.03015. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.