IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/vrs/offsta/v32y2016i4p987-1010n14.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Dead or Alive? Dealing with Unknown Eligibility in Longitudinal Surveys

Author

Listed:
  • Watson Nicole

    (Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne, Level 5, 111 Barry St, University of Melbourne Vic 3010, Australia)

Abstract

Longitudinal surveys follow people over time and some of these people will die during the life of the panel. Through fieldwork effort, some deaths will be reported or known, but others will be unobserved due to sample members no longer being issued to field or having inconclusive fieldwork outcomes (such as a noncontact that is not followed by a contact at a later wave). The coverage of deaths identified among sample members has flow-on implications to nonresponse correction. Using the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, four methods are used to examine the extent of missing death reports. The first method matches the sample to the national death register. The second method uses life-expectancy tables to extrapolate the expected number of deaths among the sample with unknown eligibility. The third method is similar but models deaths from data internal to the survey. The fourth method models deaths as part of the attrition process of a longitudinal survey. The last three methods are compared to the first method and the implications for the construction of balanced panel weights and subsequent population inference are explored.

Suggested Citation

  • Watson Nicole, 2016. "Dead or Alive? Dealing with Unknown Eligibility in Longitudinal Surveys," Journal of Official Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 32(4), pages 987-1010, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:vrs:offsta:v:32:y:2016:i:4:p:987-1010:n:14
    DOI: 10.1515/jos-2016-0052
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/jos-2016-0052
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/jos-2016-0052?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sadig, Husam, 2014. "Unknown eligibility whilst weighting for non-response: the puzzle of who has died and who is still alive?," ISER Working Paper Series 2014-35, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    2. Au, Nicole & Johnston, David W., 2014. "Self-assessed health: What does it mean and what does it hide?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 21-28.
    3. Martin Kroh, 2012. "Documentation of Sample Sizes and Panel Attrition in the German Socio Economic Panel (SOEP) (1984 until 2011)," Data Documentation 66, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    4. Martin Kroh, 2013. "Documentation of Sample Sizes and Panel Attrition in the German Socio Economic Panel (SOEP) (1984 until 2012)," Data Documentation 71, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    5. Green, Francis, 2011. "Unpacking the misery multiplier: How employability modifies the impacts of unemployment and job insecurity on life satisfaction and mental health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 265-276, March.
    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. Richter, David & Körtner, John L. & Saßenroth, Denise, 2014. "Personality Has Minor Effects on Panel Attrition," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 53, pages 31-35.
    2. Michael Weinhardt & Alexia Meyermann & Stefan Liebig & Jürgen Schupp, 2016. "The Linked Employer-Employee Study of the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP-LEE): Project Report," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 829, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    3. Anger, Silke & Camehl, Georg & Peter , Frauke H., 2016. "Job Loss and Changes in Personality - Evidence from Plant Closures," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145940, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    4. Kroh, Martin & Winter, Florin & Schupp, Jürgen, 2016. "Using Person-Fit Measures to Assess the Impact of Panel Conditioning on Reliability," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 80(4), pages 914-942.
    5. Ehlert, Martin, 2016. "The Impact of Losing Your Job: Unemployment and Influences from Market, Family, and State on Economic Well-Being in the US and Germany," EconStor Books, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, number 184652, July.
    6. Mozhaeva, Irina, 2022. "Inequalities in utilization of institutional care among older people in Estonia," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 126(7), pages 704-714.
    7. Eve Caroli & Mathilde Godard, 2016. "Does job insecurity deteriorate health?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(2), pages 131-147, February.
    8. Federico Belotti & Joanna Kopinska & Alessandro Palma & Andrea Piano Mortari, 2022. "Health status and the Great Recession. Evidence from electronic health records," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(8), pages 1770-1799, August.
    9. Lefgren, Lars J. & Stoddard, Olga B. & Stovall, John E., 2021. "Rationalizing self-defeating behaviors: Theory and evidence," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    10. Clemens Hetschko, 2016. "On the misery of losing self-employment," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 461-478, August.
    11. Liliya Leopold, 2019. "Health Measurement and Health Inequality Over the Life Course: A Comparison of Self-rated Health, SF-12, and Grip Strength," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 56(2), pages 763-784, April.
    12. repec:dau:papers:123456789/13646 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Jan Eichhorn, 2013. "Unemployment Needs Context: How Societal Differences between Countries Moderate the Loss in Life-Satisfaction for the Unemployed," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 14(6), pages 1657-1680, December.
    14. Boll, Christina & Hoffmann, Malte, 2015. "It's not all about parents' education, it also matters what they do: Parents' employment and children's school success in Germany," HWWI Research Papers 162, Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI).
    15. Jianbo Luo, 2020. "A Pecuniary Explanation for the Heterogeneous Effects of Unemployment on Happiness," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 21(7), pages 2603-2628, October.
    16. Nicholas Rohde & KK Tang & Lars Osberg, 2017. "The self-reinforcing dynamics of economic insecurity and obesity," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(17), pages 1668-1678, April.
    17. Adrian Chadi, 2019. "Dissatisfied with life or with being interviewed? Happiness and the motivation to participate in a survey," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 53(3), pages 519-553, October.
    18. Eve Caroli & Mathilde Godard, 2013. "Does Job Insecurity Deteriorate Health ? A Causal Approach for Europe," Working Papers 2013-13, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    19. Papageorgiou, Athanasios, 2018. "The Effect of Immigration on the Well-Being of Native Populations: Evidence from the United Kingdom," MPRA Paper 93045, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Zwysen, Wouter, 2013. "Where you go depends on where you come from: the influence of father’s employment status on young adult’s labour market experiences," ISER Working Paper Series 2013-24, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    21. Bierman, Alex & Upenieks, Laura & Glavin, Paul & Schieman, Scott, 2021. "Accumulation of economic hardship and health during the COVID-19 pandemic: Social causation or selection?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 275(C).

    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:vrs:offsta:v:32:y:2016:i:4:p:987-1010:n:14. 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: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.sciendo.com .

    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.