Workshop LFS, April Estimating the non-response bias using exogenous data on employment Etienne Debauche Corinne Prost
Workshop LFS, April Response rate in the French LFS › large variability in space and in time › special event in 2007
Workshop LFS, April Response rate in the French LFS › non-response survey: - « light » PAPI survey, sent to the non-respondents - around 20% of the non-respondents answer to this survey - they are more often employed than the respondents of the main survey › question: is the correction of non-response in the weighting scheme efficient enough to correct for non-response bias?
Workshop LFS, April Response rate in the French LFS › one study done in 2007: very small effect of the response rate on the measure of the unemployment rate › geographical analysis › problem: the response rate is endogenous: employment rate and response rate are both impacted by the business cycle
Workshop LFS, April Employment in the French LFS › Employment: differences between the LFS estimate and the official employment estimate, coming from administrative database
Workshop LFS, April Employment in the French LFS › a lot of reasons why both estimates are different: - concepts: ILO employment / job statistics; differences for sick leaves, maternity or paternity leaves - scope: total employment / private employment; frontier workers; collective households - quarterly average / average of the number of jobs at the end of the quarters › And errors in the LFS: sampling errors; non- response bias; bias due to the proxy answerings
Workshop LFS, April Modeling the non-response rate › behavior of the interviewers: they start with easier interviewees (for instance non-active ones). They stop when the cost of search exceeds the benefit. C n
Workshop LFS, April Using the administrative data employment estimates to assess the non-response bias Response rate: Administrative data employment: LFS employment:
Workshop LFS, April Using the administrative data employment estimates to assess the non-response bias
Workshop LFS, April Using the administrative data employment estimates to assess the non-response bias › estimation at the region level (NUTS2 and NUTS3), with region and time fixed effects: the effect of the response rate is identified within the regions, independently of the national business cycle › estimation on the employment rates › weight: population of the region
Workshop LFS, April Effect of the response rate
Workshop LFS, April Effect of the response rate › robustness check thanks to the natural experiment of 2007: the increase of the response rate on 2007 is due to the controversy. It should be exogenous.
Workshop LFS, April Effect of the response rate
Workshop LFS, April Conclusion › There is a significant effect; can the correction for non-response be improved? › The effect is not large. In particular, it only explains a small part of the discrepancies between LFS employment and administrative data employment. Can the other sources of discrepancies be quantified?
Workshop LFS, April Discussion › similar results in other countries? › do some countries use external administrative data employment in the weighting scheme (grossing factor)?