What did you really earn last year? Explaining measurement error in survey income data

Abstract: The paper analyses the sources of income measurement error in surveys with a unique data set. We use the Austrian 2008-2011 waves of the European Union 'Statistics on income and living conditions' survey which provide individual information on wages, pensions and unemployment benefits from survey interviews and officially linked administrative records. Thus, we do not have to fall back on complex two-sample matching procedures like related studies. We empirically investigate four sources of measurement error, namely social desirability, sociodemographic characteristics of the respondent, the survey design and the presence of learning effects. We find strong evidence for a social desirability bias in income reporting, whereas the presence of learning effects is mixed and depends on the type of income under consideration. An Owen value decomposition reveals that social desirability is a major explanation of misreporting in wages and pensions, whereas sociodemographic characteristics

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource
• Language: Englisch
• Notes: Veröffentlichungsversion ; begutachtet (peer reviewed) ; In: Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (Statistics in Society) ; 182 (2019) 4 ; 1411-1437

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (where): Mannheim
• (who): SSOAR, GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften e.V.
• (when): 2019
• Creator: Angel, Stefan ; Disslbacher, Franziska ; Humer, Stefan ; Schnetzer, Matthias

Further information

• DOI: 10.1111/rssa.12463
• URN: urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-75292-4
• Rights: Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 15.08.2025, 7:31 AM CEST