Papers Containing Tag(s): 'Current Population Survey'
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Viewing papers 1 through 10 of 283
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Working PaperEstimating the Graduate Coverage of Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes
September 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-61
This paper proposes a new methodology for estimating the coverage rate of the Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes data product (PSEO), both as a share of new graduates and as a share of total working-age degree holders in the United States. This paper also assesses how representative PSEO is of the broader population of college graduates across an array of institutional and individual characteristics.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperBusiness Owners and the Self-Employed: 33 Million (and Counting!)
September 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-60
Entrepreneurs are known to be key drivers of economic growth, and the rise of online platforms and the broader 'gig economy' has led self-employment to surge in recent decades. Yet the young and small businesses associated with this activity are often absent from economic data. In this paper, we explore a novel longitudinal dataset that covers the owners of tens of millions of the smallest businesses: those without employees. We produce three new sets of statistics on the rapidly growing set of nonemployer businesses. First, we measure transitions between self-employment and wage and salary jobs. Second, we describe nonemployer business entry and exit, as well as transitions between legal form (e.g., sole proprietorship to S corporation). Finally, we link owners to their nonemployer businesses and examine the dynamics of business ownership.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperUnemployment Insurance, Wage Pass-Through, and Endogenous Take-Up
September 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-59
This paper studies how unemployment insurance (UI) generosity affects reservation wages, re-employment wages, and benefit take-up. Using Benefit Accuracy Measurement (BAM) data, we estimate a cross-sectional elasticity of reservation wages with respect to weekly UI benefits of 0.014. Exploiting state variation in Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) intensity and the timing of federal supplements, we find that expanded benefits during COVID-19 increased reservation wages by 8'12 percent. Using CPS rotation data, we also document a 9 percent rise in re-employment wages for UI-eligible workers relative to ineligible workers. Over the same period, the UI take-up rate rose from roughly 30 to 40 percent; Probit estimates indicate that higher benefit levels, rather than changes in observables, account for this increase. A directed search model with an endogenous filing decision replicates these facts: generosity primarily operates through the extensive margin of take-up, which mutes the pass-through from benefits to wages.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperRevisiting the Unintended Consequences of Ban the Box
August 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-58
Ban-the-Box (BTB) policies intend to help formerly incarcerated individuals find employment by delaying when employers can ask about criminal records. We revisit the finding in Doleac and Hansen (2020) that BTB causes statistical discrimination against minority men. We correct miscoded BTB laws and show that estimates from the Current Population Survey (CPS) remain quantitatively similar, while those from the American Community Survey (ACS) now fail to reject the null hypothesis of no effect of BTB on employment. In contrast to the published estimates, these ACS results are statistically significantly different from the CPS results, indicating a lack of robustness across datasets. We do not find evidence that these differences are due to sample composition or survey weights. There is limited evidence that these divergent results are explained by the different frequencies of these surveys. Differences in sample sizes may also lead to different estimates; the ACS has a much larger sample and more statistical power to detect effects near the corrected CPS estimates.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperDifferences in Disability Insurance Allowance Rates
August 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-54
Allowance rates for disability insurance applications vary by race and ethnicity, but it is unclear to what extent these differences are artifacts of other differing socio-economic and health characteristics, or selection issues in SSA's race and ethnicity data. This paper uses the 2015 American Community Survey linked to 2015-2019 SSA administrative data to investigate DI application allowance rates among non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, non-Hispanic Asian, non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaska Native, and Hispanic applicants aged 25-65. The analysis uses regression, propensity score matching, and inverse probability weighting to estimate differences in allowance rates among applicants who are similar on observable characteristics. Relative to raw comparisons, differences by race and ethnicity in multivariate analyses are substantially smaller in magnitude and are generally not statistically significant.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperReceipt of Public and Private Food Assistance Across the Rural-Urban Continuum Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Analysis of Current Population Survey Data
August 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-51
Background: The nutrition safety net in the United States is critical to supporting food security among households in need. Food assistance in the United States includes both government-funded food programs and private community-based providers who distribute food to in need households. The COVID-19 pandemic impacted experiences of food security and use of private and public food assistance resources. However, this may have differed for households residing in urban versus rural areas. We explored receipt of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits or food from community-based emergency food providers across a detailed measure of the rural-urban continuum before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: We linked restricted use Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement data to census-tract level United States Department of Agriculture Rural-Urban Commuting Area codes to estimate prevalence of self-reported SNAP participation and receipt of emergency food support across temporal (2015-2019 versus 2020-2021) and socio-spatial (urban, large rural city/town, small rural town, or isolated rural town/area) dimensions. We report prevalences as point estimates with 95% confidence intervals, all weighted for national representation. Results: The weighted prevalence of self-reported SNAP participation was 8.9% (8.7-9.2%) in 2015-2019 and 9.1% (8.5-9.5%) in 2020-2021 in urban areas, 11.4% (10.8-12.2%) in 2015-2019 and 11.6% (10.5-12.9%) in 2020-2021 in large rural towns/cities, 13.4% (12.3-14.6%) in 2015-2019 and 12.3% (10.5-14.5%) in 2020-2021 in small rural towns, and 9.7% (8.6-10.9%) in 2015-2019 and 10.9% (8.8-13.4% )in 2020-2021 isolated rural towns. The weighted prevalence of self-reported receipt of emergency food was 4.9% (4.8-5.1%) in 2015-2019 and 6.2% (5.8-6.5%) in 2020-2021 in urban areas, 6.8% (6.2-7.4%) in 2015-2019 and 7.6% (6.6-8.6%) in 2020-2021 in large rural towns/cities, 8.1% (7.3-9.1%) in 2015-2019 and 7.1% (5.7-8.8%) in 2020-2021 in small rural towns, and 6.8% (5.9-7.7%) in 2015-2019 and 8.5% (6.7-10.6%) in 2020-2021 isolated rural towns. Conclusion: Households in rural communities use public and private food assistance at higher rates than urban areas, but there is variation across communities depending on the level of rurality.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperEarnings Measurement Error, Nonresponse and Administrative Mismatch in the CPS
July 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-48
Using the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement matched to Social Security Administration Detailed Earnings Records, we link observations across consecutive years to investigate a relationship between item nonresponse and measurement error in the earnings questions. Linking individuals across consecutive years allows us to observe switching from response to nonresponse and vice versa. We estimate OLS, IV, and finite mixture models that allow for various assumptions separately for men and women. We find that those who respond in both years of the survey exhibit less measurement error than those who respond in one year. Our findings suggest a trade-off between survey response and data quality that should be considered by survey designers, data collectors, and data users.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Rural/Urban Volunteering Divide
June 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-42
Are rural residents more likely to volunteer than those living in urban places? Although early sociological theory posited that rural residents were more likely to experience social bonds connecting them to their community, increasing their odds of volunteer engagement, empirical support is limited. Drawing upon the full population of rural and urban respondents to the United States Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS) Volunteering Supplement (2002-2015), we found that rural respondents are more likely to report volunteering compared to urban respondents, although these differences are decreasing over time. Moreover, we found that propensities for rural and urban volunteerism vary based on differences in both individual and place-based characteristics; further, the size of these effects differ across rural and urban places. These findings have important implications for theory and empirical analysis.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperThe Decline of Volunteering in the United States: Is it the Economy?
June 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-41
This article investigates the complex interactions between local and national economic contexts and volunteering behavior. We examine three dimensions of local economic context'economic disadvantage (e.g., the percentage of families living in poverty), income inequality, and economic growth (e.g., the change in median household income) and the impact of a national/global economic jolt'the Great Recession. Analysis of data from the Current Population Survey's (CPS) Volunteering Supplement (2002-2015) reveals. Individuals who live in places characterized by economic disadvantage and economic inequality are less likely to volunteer than individuals in more advantaged, equitable communities. The recession had a dampening effect on volunteering overall, but it had the largest dampening effect on individual volunteering in communities with above average rates of income equality and higher rates of economic growth. While individuals living in rural communities were more likely to volunteer than their urban counterparts before the recession, rural/urban differences disappear after the recession.View Full Paper PDF
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Working PaperTapping Business and Household Surveys to Sharpen Our View of Work from Home
June 2025
Working Paper Number:
CES-25-36
Timely business-level measures of work from home (WFH) are scarce for the U.S. economy. We review prior survey-based efforts to quantify the incidence and character of WFH and describe new questions that we developed and fielded for the Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS). Drawing on more than 150,000 firm-level responses to the BTOS, we obtain four main findings. First, nearly a third of businesses have employees who work from home, with tremendous variation across sectors. The share of businesses with WFH employees is nearly ten times larger in the Information sector than in Accommodation and Food Services. Second, employees work from home about 1 day per week, on average, and businesses expect similar WFH levels in five years. Third, feasibility aside, businesses' largest concern with WFH relates to productivity. Seven percent of businesses find that onsite work is more productive, while two percent find that WFH is more productive. Fourth, there is a low level of tracking and monitoring of WFH activities, with 70% of firms reporting they do not track employee days in the office and 75% reporting they do not monitor employees when they work from home. These lessons serve as a starting point for enhancing WFH-related content in the American Community Survey and other household surveys.View Full Paper PDF
