IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cen/wpaper/24-55.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Comparison of Child Reporting in the American Community Survey and Federal Income Tax Returns Based on California Birth Records

Author

Listed:
  • Gloria G. Aldana

Abstract

This paper takes advantage of administrative records from California, a state with a large child population and a significant historical undercount of children in Census Bureau data, dependent information in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Form 1040 records, and the American Community Survey to characterize undercounted children and compare child reporting. While IRS Form 1040 records offer potential utility for adjusting child undercounting in Census Bureau surveys, this analysis finds overlapping reporting issues among various demographic and economic groups. Specifically, older children, those of Non-Hispanic Black mothers and Hispanic mothers, children or parents with lower English proficiency, children whose mothers did not complete high school, and families with lower income-to-poverty ratio were less frequently reported in IRS 1040 records than other groups. Therefore, using IRS 1040 dependent records may have limitations for accurately representing populations with characteristics associated with the undercount of children in surveys.

Suggested Citation

  • Gloria G. Aldana, 2024. "Comparison of Child Reporting in the American Community Survey and Federal Income Tax Returns Based on California Birth Records," Working Papers 24-55, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    • Handle: RePEc:cen:wpaper:24-55
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/2024/adrm/ces/CES-WP-24-55.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2024
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Katie Genadek & Joshua Sanders & Amanda Stevenson, 2022. "Measuring US fertility using administrative data from the Census Bureau," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 47(2), pages 37-58.
    2. Maggie R. Jones & James P. Ziliak, 2022. "The Antipoverty Impact of the EITC: New Estimates from Survey and Administrative Tax Records," National Tax Journal, University of Chicago Press, vol. 75(3), pages 451-479.
    3. Brittany Bond & J. David Brown & Adela Luque & Amy O’Hara, 2014. "The Nature of the Bias When Studying Only Linkable Person Records: Evidence from the American Community Survey," CARRA Working Papers 2014-08, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    4. Deborah H. Griffin & William P. O'Hare, 2020. "Are Census Omissions of Young Children Due to Respondent Misconceptions about the Census?," International Journal of Social Science Studies, Redfame publishing, vol. 8(6), pages 59-72, December.
    5. Leticia Fernandez & Rachel Shattuck & James Noon, 2018. "The Use of Administrative Records and the American Community Survey to Study the Characteristics of Undercounted Young Children in the 2010 Census," CARRA Working Papers 2018-05, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jennifer Bernard & Kelsey Drotning & Katie R. Genadek, 2024. "Where Are Your Parents? Exploring Potential Bias in Administrative Records on Children," Working Papers 24-18, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    2. Benjamin Cerf Harris, 2015. "Likely Transgender Individuals in U.S. Federal Administrative Records and the 2010 Census," CARRA Working Papers 2015-03, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    3. Timothy J. Halliday & Randall Q. Akee, 2020. "The impact of Medicaid on medical utilization in a vulnerable population: Evidence from COFA migrants," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(10), pages 1231-1250, October.
    4. Raj Chetty & John N. Friedman & Nathaniel Hendren & Maggie R. Jones & Sonya R. Porter, 2018. "The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility," Working Papers 18-42, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    5. Zachary H. Seeskin, 2016. "Evaluating the Use of Commercial Data to Improve Survey Estimates of Property Taxes," CARRA Working Papers 2016-06, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    6. Iselin, John & Mackay, Taylor & Unrath, Matthew, 2023. "Measuring take-up of the California EITC with state administrative data," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 227(C).
    7. Erik Scherpf & Benjamin Cerf, 2019. "Local Labor Demand and Program Participation Dynamics: Evidence from New York SNAP Administrative Records," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(2), pages 394-425, March.
    8. Jeff Larrimore & Jacob Mortenson & David Splinter, 2021. "Household Incomes in Tax Data: Using Addresses to Move from Tax-Unit to Household Income Distributions," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 56(2), pages 600-631.
    9. Maggie R. Jones & Adam Bee & Amanda Eng & Kendall Houghton & Nikolas Pharris-Ciurej & Sonya R. Porter & Jonathan Rothbaum & John Voorheis, 2024. "Mobility, Opportunity, and Volatility Statistics (MOVS): Infrastructure Files and Public Use Data," Working Papers 24-23, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    10. Randall Akee & Maggie R. Jones, 2019. "Immigrants’ Earnings Growth and Return Migration from the U.S.: Examining their Determinants using Linked Survey and Administrative Data," NBER Working Papers 25639, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Zachary Parolin & Megan Curran & Jordan Matsudaira & Jane Waldfogel & Christoper Wimer, 2021. "Estimating Monthly Poverty Rates in the United States," Poverty and Social Policy Brief 20415, Center on Poverty and Social Policy, Columbia University.
    12. J. David Brown & Misty L. Heggeness & Suzanne M. Dorinski & Lawrence Warren & Moises Yi, 2019. "Predicting the Effect of Adding a Citizenship Question to the 2020 Census," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 56(4), pages 1173-1194, August.
    13. Renuka Bhaskar & James Noon & Brett O'Hara & Victoria Velkoff, 2016. "Medicare Coverage and Reporting," CARRA Working Papers 2016-12, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    14. Mark A. Leach & Jennifer Van Hook & James D. Bachmeier, 2018. "Using Linked Data to Investigate True Intergenerational Change: Three Generations Over Seven Decades," CARRA Working Papers 2018-09, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    15. Adela Luque & Renuka Bhaskar & James Noon & Kevin Rinz & Victoria Udalova, 2019. "Nonemployer Statistics by Demographics (NES-D): Using Administrative and Census Records Data in Business Statistics," Working Papers 19-01, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    16. David Splinter & Jeff Larrimore & Jacob Mortenson, 2017. "Whose Child Is This? Shifting of Dependents among EITC Claimants within the Same Household," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 70(4), pages 737-758, December.
    17. Adam Bee & Joshua Mitchell & Nikolas Mittag & Jonathan Rothbaum & Carl Sanders & Lawrence Schmidt & Matthew Unrath, 2023. "National Experimental Wellbeing Statistics - Version 1," Working Papers 23-04, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    18. Susana M. Quiros & William P. O’Hare, 2024. "Towards a More Accurate Count: Identifying State-Level Predictors of the Undercount of Young Hispanic Children in the 2010 and 2020 U.S. Censuses," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 43(6), pages 1-27, December.
    19. Randall Akee & Maggie R. Jones & Sonya R. Porter, 2017. "Racial Disparity in an Era of Increasing Income Inequality," CARRA Working Papers 2017-01, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    20. Timothy J. Halliday & Randall Q. Akee & Tetine Sentell & Megan Inada & Jill Miyamura, 2019. "The Impact of Public Health Insurance on Medical Utilization in a Vulnerable Population: Evidence from COFA Migrants," Working Papers 2019-1, University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization, University of Hawaii at Manoa.

    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:cen:wpaper:24-55. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Dawn Anderson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesgvus.html .

    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.