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Empirical Economics

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01-06-2014

On the reliability of retrospective unemployment information in European household panel data

Authors: Tomi Kyyrä, Ralf A. Wilke

Published in: Empirical Economics | Issue 4/2014

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Abstract

The retrospectively recalled calendar of activities in the European Community Household Panel is a prime resource for cross-country analysis of unemployment experience. We investigate the reliability of these data and find that 26 % of unemployed respondents misreported retrospectively their unemployment status in the subsequent interview. We observe large differences across countries: While the conditional probability of consistent information is 96 % in the UK, it is just 51 % in Greece for a comparable individual. By analyzing long-term unemployment and unemployment persistence, we show that the results of cross-country comparisons are strongly affected by these data problems.

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The same issue arises also in other validation studies; see for example Jürges (2007).

The unit non-response rate is defined as 1 minus the ratio of the number of completed interviews to the number of attempted interviews by country. The attrition rate is defined as the share of individuals still in the sample in the last wave who appeared in the panel at least once between the years 1996 and 2001.

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Title: On the reliability of retrospective unemployment information in European household panel data
Authors: Tomi Kyyrä
Ralf A. Wilke
Publication date: 01-06-2014
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in: Empirical Economics / Issue 4/2014
Print ISSN: 0377-7332
Electronic ISSN: 1435-8921
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-013-0718-1

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