CREAT: Census Research Exploration and Analysis Tool

Trends in Earnings Inequality and Earnings Instability among U.S. Couples: How Important is Assortative Matching?

January 2015

Abstract

Document Tags and Keywords

Similar Working Papers Similarity between working papers are determined by an unsupervised neural network model know as Doc2Vec.

Doc2Vec is a model that represents entire documents as fixed-length vectors, allowing for the capture of semantic meaning in a way that relates to the context of words within the document. The model learns to associate a unique vector with each document while simultaneously learning word vectors, enabling tasks such as document classification, clustering, and similarity detection by preserving the order and structure of words. The document vectors are compared using cosine similarity/distance to determine the most similar working papers. Papers identified with 🔥 are in the top 20% of similarity.

The 10 most similar working papers to the working paper 'Trends in Earnings Inequality and Earnings Instability among U.S. Couples: How Important is Assortative Matching?' are listed below in order of similarity.

• Working Paper

  🔥

  
  
  The Parental Gender Earnings Gap in the United States
  

  January 2017

  Authors: Danielle H. Sandler, YoonKyung Chung, Barbara Downs, Robert Sienkiewicz

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-17-68

  This paper examines the parental gender earnings gap, the within-couple differences in earnings over time, before and after the birth of a child. The presence and timing of children are important components of the gender wage gap, but there is selection in both decisions. We estimate the earnings gap between male and female spouses over time, which allows us to control for this timing choice as well as other shared external earnings shifters, such as the local labor market. We use Social Security Administration Detail Earnings Records (SSA-DER) data linked to the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to examine a panel of earnings from 1978 to 2011 for the individuals in the SIPP sample. Our main results show that the spousal earnings gap doubles between two years before the birth of the first child and the year after that child is born. After the child's first year of life the gap continues to grow for the next five years, but at a much slower rate, then tapers off and even begins to fall once the child reaches school-age.
  View Full Paper PDF

  ---

• Working Paper

  
  
  Understanding Earnings Instability: How Important are Employment Fluctuations and Job Changes?
  

  August 2009

  Authors: Kristin McCue, Sule Celik, Chinhui Juhn, Jesse Thompson

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-09-20

  Using three panel datasets (the matched CPS, the SIPP, and the newly available Longitudinal Employment and Household Dynamics (LEHD) data), we examine trends in male earnings instability in recent decades. In contrast to several papers that find a recent upward trend in earnings instability using the PSID data, we find that earnings instability has been remarkably stable in the 1990s and the 2000s. We find that job changing rates remained relatively constant casting doubt on the importance of labor market 'churning.' We find some evidence that earnings instability increased among job stayers which lends credence to the view that greater reliance on incentive pay increased instability of worker pay. We also find an offsetting decrease in earnings instability among job changers due largely to declining unemployment associated with job changes. One caveat to our findings is that we focus on men who have positive earnings in two adjacent years and thus ignore men who exit the labor force or re-enter after an extended period. Preliminary investigation suggests that ignoring these transitions understates the rise in earnings instability over the past two decades.
  View Full Paper PDF

  ---

• Working Paper

  
  
  Estimating Measurement Error in SIPP Annual Job Earnings: A Comparison of Census Bureau Survey and SSA Administrative Data
  

  July 2011

  Authors: John M. Abowd, Martha Stinson

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-11-20

  We quantify sources of variation in annual job earnings data collected by the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to determine how much of the variation is the result of measurement error. Jobs reported in the SIPP are linked to jobs reported in an administrative database, the Detailed Earnings Records (DER) drawn from the Social Security Administration's Master Earnings File, a universe file of all earnings reported on W-2 tax forms. As a result of the match, each job potentially has two earnings observations per year: survey and administrative. Unlike previous validation studies, both of these earnings measures are viewed as noisy measures of some underlying true amount of annual earnings. While the existence of survey error resulting from respondent mistakes or misinterpretation is widely accepted, the idea that administrative data are also error-prone is new. Possible sources of employer reporting error, employee under-reporting of compensation such as tips, and general differences between how earnings may be reported on tax forms and in surveys, necessitates the discarding of the assumption that administrative data are a true measure of the quantity that the survey was designed to collect. In addition, errors in matching SIPP and DER jobs, a necessary task in any use of administrative data, also contribute to measurement error in both earnings variables. We begin by comparing SIPP and DER earnings for different demographic and education groups of SIPP respondents. We also calculate different measures of changes in earnings for individuals switching jobs. We estimate a standard earnings equation model using SIPP and DER earnings and compare the resulting coefficients. Finally exploiting the presence of individuals with multiple jobs and shared employers over time, we estimate an econometric model that includes random person and firm effects, a common error component shared by SIPP and DER earnings, and two independent error components that represent the variation unique to each earnings measure. We compare the variance components from this model and consider how the DER and SIPP differ across unobservable components.
  View Full Paper PDF

  ---

• Working Paper

  
  
  Interpreting Cohort Profiles of Lifecycle Earnings Volatility
  

  April 2024

  Authors: James P. Ziliak, Charles Hokayem, Christopher R. Bollinger, Richard Blundell

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-24-21

  We present new estimates of earnings volatility over time and the lifecycle for men and women by race and human capital. Using a long panel of restricted-access administrative Social Security earnings linked to the Current Population Survey, we estimate volatility with both transparent summary measures, as well as decompositions into permanent and transitory components. From the late 1970s to the mid 1990s there is a strong negative trend in earnings volatility for both men and women. We show this is driven by a reduction in transitory variance. Starting in the mid 1990s there is relative stability in trends of male earnings volatility because of an increase in the variance of permanent shocks, especially among workers without a college education, and a more attenuated trend decline among women. Cohort analyses indicate a strong U-shape pattern of volatility over the working life, which comes from large permanent shocks early and later in the lifecycle. However, this U-shape shifted downward and leftward in more recent cohorts, the latter from the fanning out of lifecycle transitory volatility in younger cohorts. These patterns are more pronounced among White men and women compared to Black workers.
  View Full Paper PDF

  ---

• Working Paper

  
  
  Are the Lasting Effects of Employee-Employer Separations induced by Layoff and Disability Similar? Exploring Job Displacement using Survey and Administrative Data
  

  October 2005

  Authors: Melissa Bjelland

  Working Paper Number:

  tp-2005-03

  This paper integrates the existing literatures on displacement and health by examining the enduring effects of job dislocations that are induced by firm and individual shocks to employment. A joint estimation of hourly wage rates and weekly hours illuminates the disparities in these economic outcomes that exist between those who have reestablished themselves in the workplace subsequent to a layoff and those who have returned to work following the onset of a disability relative to those with uninterrupted job histories. As an extension of these ideas, employment transitions and workplace adjustments are modeled to capture spousal reactions to these shocks. Multiple indicators of health from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and Social Security Administrative benefits records are incorporated into the analyses of those with impairments that prompted job loss. These measures allow knowledge to be gleaned regarding the qualitative di'erences in the lasting impacts of job cessation resulting from medically diagnosed illnesses as compared to estimates uncovered using survey data sources alone. By considering time durations following these periods of separation in light of these indicators of well-being, a more comprehensive understanding of the long-run repercussions of employee-employer separation is acquired.
  View Full Paper PDF

  ---

• Working Paper

  
  
  Trends in Earnings Volatility using Linked Administrative and Survey Data
  

  August 2020

  Authors: James P. Ziliak, Charles Hokayem, Christopher R. Bollinger

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-20-24

  We document trends in earnings volatility separately by gender in combination with other characteristics such as race, educational attainment, and employment status using unique linked survey and administrative data for the tax years spanning 1995-2015. We also decompose the variance of trend volatility into within- and between-group contributions, as well as transitory and permanent shocks. Our results for continuously working men suggest that trend earnings volatility was stable over our period in both survey and tax data, though with a substantial countercyclical business-cycle component. Trend earnings volatility among women declined over the period in both survey and administrative data, but unlike for men, there was no change over the Great Recession. The variance decompositions indicate that nonresponders, low-educated, racial minorities, and part-year workers have the greatest group specific earnings volatility, but with the exception of part-year workers, they contribute least to the level and trend of volatility owing to their small share of the population. There is evidence of stable transitory volatility, but rising permanent volatility over the past two decades in male and female earnings.
  View Full Paper PDF

  ---

• Working Paper

  
  
  Workplace Characteristics and Employment of Older Workers
  

  September 2012

  Authors: Kristin McCue, Chinhui Juhn

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-12-31

  As aging of the U.S. population places increased demands on public programs such as Social Security, an important question is how long older Americans are willing and able to work before they retire from the labor force. While studies based on household surveys have provided information on the role of savings, health status, pension and health insurance coverage, there is relatively little information on how workplace and employer characteristics affect the employment of older workers. In this study we use linked employer-employee data to explore the relationship between the characteristics of jobs held at age 55 and early retirement. We focus on a sample of 63-year-olds drawn from the 2005-2008 American Community Survey. We match this sample to information on their earnings, employment, employers and coworkers drawn from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics data for the years in which they age from 55 to 63. We use employment status as reported in the ACS to split the sample into those who have retired by age 63 and those who continue to work. We then examine differences between early retirees and continuing workers in the characteristics of their employment at age 55, and at how these characteristics change as they approach age 63. We find that early retirees are more likely to be employed by larger employers at age 55 than are continuers. They work for employers with somewhat higher pay than do continuers, and are less likely to have young coworkers.
  View Full Paper PDF

  ---

• Working Paper

  
  
  Income Effects in Labor Supply: Evidence from Child-Related Tax Benefits
  

  May 2016

  Authors: Philippe Wingender, Sara LaLumia

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-16-24

  A parent whose child is born in December can claim child-related tax benefits when she files her tax return a few months later. Parents of children born in January must wait more than a year before they can receive child-related tax benefits. As a result, families with December births have higher after-tax income in the first year of a child's life than otherwise similar families with January births. This paper estimates the corresponding income effect on maternal labor supply, testing whether mothers who give birth in December work and earn less in the months following birth. We use data from the American Community Survey, the Survey of Income and Program Participation, and the 2000 Decennial Census. We find that December mothers have a lower probability of working, particularly in the third month after a child's birth. Earnings data from the SIPP indicate that an additional dollar of child-related tax benefits reduces annual maternal earnings in the year following a child's birth by approximately one dollar.
  View Full Paper PDF

  ---

• Working Paper

  
  
  Selection and Specialization in the Evolution of Marriage Earnings Gaps
  

  October 2015

  Authors: Kristin McCue, Chinhui Juhn

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-15-36

  We examine changes in marriage and earnings patterns across four cohorts born between 1936 and 1975, using data from a series of Survey of Income and Program Participation panels linked to administrative data on earnings. We find that for both men and women, marriage has become increasingly positively associated with education and earnings potential. We compare ordinary least squares (OLS) and fixed effect (FE) estimates of the earnings differential associated with marriage. We find that the marriage earnings gap fell for women in fixed-effect estimates implying that the impact of specialization has diminished over time. We also find that increasingly positive selection into marriage means that OLS estimates overstate the reduction in the marriage earnings gap. While our findings imply that marriage is no longer associated with lower earnings among women without minor children in our most recent cohort, the motherhood gap remains large. Among men, we find that the marriage premium actually increases for more recent birth cohorts in fixed-effects regressions.
  View Full Paper PDF

  ---

• Working Paper

  
  
  Is there an Advantage to Working? The Relationship between Maternal Employment and Intergenerational Mobility
  

  September 2015

  Authors: Martha Stinson, Peter Gottschalk

  Working Paper Number:

  CES-15-27

  We investigate the question of whether investing in a child's development by having a parent stay at home when the child is young is correlated with the child's adult outcomes. Specifically, do children with stay-at-home mothers have higher adult earnings than children raised in households with a working mother? The major contribution of our study is that, unlike previous studies, we have access to rich longitudinal data that allows us to measure both the parental earnings when the child is very young and the adult earnings of the child. Our findings are consistent with previous studies that show insignificant differences between children raised by stay-at-home mothers during their early years and children with mothers working in the market. We find no impact of maternal employment during the first 5 years of a child's life on earnings, employment, or mobility measures of either sons or daughters. We do find, however, that maternal employment during children's high school years is correlated with a higher probability of employment as adults for daughters and a higher correlation between parent and daughter earnings ranks.
  View Full Paper PDF

  ---