Estimating Intergenerational Mobility with Incomplete Data : Coresidency and Truncation Bias in Rank-Based Relative and Absolute Mobility Measures
The rank-based measures of intergenerational mobility have become increasingly popular in economics literature. Recent evidence shows that rank-based measures are less affected by measurement error and life-cycle bias compared with other standard m...
| Main Authors: | , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2018
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/503481524073263573/Estimating-intergenerational-mobility-with-incomplete-data-coresidency-and-truncation-bias-in-rank-based-relative-and-absolute-mobility-measures http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29716 |
| Summary: | The rank-based measures of
intergenerational mobility have become increasingly popular
in economics literature. Recent evidence shows that
rank-based measures are less affected by measurement error
and life-cycle bias compared with other standard measures
such as intergenerational regression coefficient and
intergenerational correlation. However, most of the
available household surveys suffer from sample truncation,
because coresidency is used to define household membership.
There is no evidence on how sample truncation affects the
rank-based mobility estimates relative to intergenerational
regression coefficient and intergenerational correlation.
This paper provides evidence on this in the context of
intergenerational schooling persistence, using two
exceptional surveys from India and Bangladesh that include
all children irrespective of residency status. The analysis
shows that the measures of relative mobility (slopes) are
biased downward in coresident samples, but the average bias
in rank correlation is less than half of that in
intergenerational regression coefficient, and comparable to
that in intergenerational correlation in magnitude. The
intercept estimates are biased upward, with the largest bias
found in the intercept of the regression used for
intergenerational correlation. Truncation bias in rank-based
absolute mobility estimates is the lowest in most cases. The
results strengthen the case for rank-based measures of
intergenerational mobility when working with the standard
household surveys. |
|---|