Are proxy interviews associated with biased earnings reports? Marital status and gender effects of proxy

The Economic Assimilation of Second-Generation Men: An Analysis of Earnings Trajectories Using Administrative Records

Previous research on the economic assimilation of recent U.S.-born children of immigrants who form the new second generation has disproportionately focused on their educational attainment and other early-life outcomes. In this study, we examine the earnings trajectories of second-generation men through a large part of their adult lives using a unique dataset that links respondents from more than two decades of the Current Population Survey to their longitudinal tax records. This longitudinal information allows us to compare the progress second-generation men of different race and ethnicity make in narrowing the earnings gaps with later generations. We consider the extent to which differences in educational attainment and in early occupational placement affect the earnings trajectories of second-generation men. New second-generation men as a whole experience considerable earnings mobility during their lifetimes. However, we also find large differences by race and ethnicity that cannot be fully explained by educational attainment. Second-generation Hispanic men in particular begin their careers with an earnings deficit relative to later-generation White men and fall further behind. Thus, the stalling or reversal in Hispanic economic assimilation appears to begin during the course of the second generation rather than in later generations as previously thought.

Differences Between Household Income from Surveys and Registers and How These Affect the Poverty Headcount: Evidence from the Austrian SILC

We take advantage of the fact that for the Austrian SILC 2008-2011, two data sources are available in parallel for the same households: register-based and survey-based income data. Thus, we aim to explain which households tend to under- or over-report their household income by estimating multinomial logit and OLS models with covariates referring to the interview situation, employment status and socio-demographic household characteristics. Furthermore, we analyze source-specific differences in the distribution of household income and how these differences affect aggregate poverty indicators based on household income. The analysis reveals an increase in the cross-sectional poverty rates for 2008-2011 and the longitudinal poverty rate if register data rather than survey data are used. These changes in the poverty rate are mainly driven by differences in employment income rather than sampling weights and other income components. Regression results show a pattern of mean-reverting errors when comparing household income between the two data sources. Furthermore, differences between data sources for both under-reporting and over-reporting slightly decrease with the number of panel waves in which a household participated. Among the other variables analyzed that are related to the interview situation (mode, proxy, interview month), only the number of proxy interviews was (weakly) positively correlated with the difference between data sources, although this outcome was not robust over different model specifications.

A pilot study among older adults of the concordance between their self-reports to a health survey and spousal proxy reports on their behalf

Background

Proxy respondents are frequently used in health surveys, and the proxy is most often the spouse. Longstanding concerns linger, however, about the validity of using spousal proxies, especially for older adults. The purpose of this pilot study was to evaluate the concordance between self-reports and spousal proxy reports to a standard health survey in a small convenience sample of older married couples.

Methods

We used the Seniors Together in Aging Research (STAR) volunteer registry at the University of Iowa to identify and consent a cross-sectional, convenience sample of 28 married husband and wife couples. Private, personal interviews with each member of the married couple using a detailed health survey based on the 2012 Health and Retirement Study (HRS) instrument were conducted using computer assisted personal interviewing software. Within couples, each wife completed the health survey first for herself and then for her husband, and each husband completed the health survey first for himself and then for his wife. The health survey topics included health ratings, health conditions, mobility, instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs), health services use, and preventative services. Percent of agreement and prevalence and bias adjusted kappa statistics (PABAKs) were used to evaluate concordance.

Results

PABAK coefficients indicated moderate to excellent concordance (PABAKs >0.60) for most of the IADL, health condition, hospitalization, surgery, preventative service, and mobility questions, but only slight to fair concordance (PABAKs = −0.21 to 0.60) for health ratings, and physician and dental visits.

Conclusions

These results do not allay longstanding concerns about the validity of routinely using spousal proxies in health surveys to obtain health ratings or the number of physician and dental visits among older adults. Further research is needed in a nationally representative sample of older couples in which each wife completes the health survey first for herself and then for her husband, each husband completes the health survey first for himself and then for his wife, and both spouses’ Medicare claims are linked to their health survey responses to determine not just the concordance between spousal reports, but the concordance of those survey responses to the medical record.