Earnings functions form the basis of numerous labour market analyses. Non-response (particularly among higher earners) may, however, lead to the exclusion of a significant proportion of South Africa’s earnings base. Earnings brackets have been built into surveys to maintain sufficient response rates, but also to capture information from those who are unsure about the earnings of fellow household members. This data type gives a rough indication of where the respondent lies in the income distribution, however exact figures are not available for estimation purposes. To overcome the mixed categorical and point nature of the dependent variable, researchers have traditionally applied midpoints to bracket earnings. Is this method too rudimentary? It is important to establish whether the brackets are too broad in South African Household surveys to be able to make reliable inferences. Here, midpoints are imputed to interval-coded responses alongside theoretical conditional means from the Pareto and lognormal distributions. The interval regression is implemented as a basis case, as it soundly incorporates point and bracket data in its likelihood function. Monte-Carlo simulation evidence suggests that interval regressions are least sensitive to bracket size, however midpoint imputation suffers distortions once brackets are too broad. Coefficient differences are investigated to distinguish similar from different results given the chosen remedy, and to establish whether midpoint imputations are credibly similar to applying interval regressions. To this end, testing procedures require adjustment, with due consideration of the heteroskedasticity introduced by Heckman 2-step estimates. Bootstrapping enhances conclusions, which shows that coefficients are virtually invariant to the proposed methods. Given that the bracket structure of South African Household Surveys has remained largely unchanged, midpoints can be applied without introducing coefficient bias.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number
08/2006.
Find related papers by JEL classification: C15 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: General - - - Statistical Simulation Methods C24 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Truncated and Censored Models C42 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Survey Methods J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General C81 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - Microeconomic Data
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)