BIBLIOGRAPHY

Publications, working papers, and other research using data resources from IPUMS.

Full Citation

Title: What Time Use Surveys Can (And Cannot) Tell Us about Labor Supply

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2019

Abstract: It has been widely acknowledged that the measurement of labor supply in the Current Population Survey (CPS) and other conventional microeconomic surveys has nonclassical measurement error, which will bias the estimates of crucial parameters in labor economics, such as labor supply elasticity. Time diary studies, such as the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), only have accurate measurement of hours worked on a single day, hence the weekly hours worked are unobserved. Despite the missing data problem, we provide several consistent estimators of the parameters in weekly labor supply equation using the information in the time use surveys. The consistency of our estimators does not require more conditions beyond those for a usual two stage least square (2SLS) estimator when the true weekly hours worked are observed. We also show that it is impossible to recover the weekly number of hours worked or its distribution function from time use surveys like the ATUS. In our empirical application we find considerable evidence of nonclassical measurement error in the hours worked in the CPS, and illustrate the consequences of using mismeasured weekly hours worked in empirical studies.

Url: https://economics.ucr.edu/repec/ucr/wpaper/201912.pdf

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Chou, Cheng; Shi, Ruoyao

Publisher: University of Leicester

Data Collections: IPUMS Time Use - ATUS

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Other

Countries: United States

IPUMS NHGIS NAPP IHIS ATUS Terrapop