NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

Measuring Labor Earnings Inequality using Public-Use March Current Population Survey Data: The Value of Including Variances and Cell Means When Imputing Topcoded Values

Richard V. Burkhauser, Shuaizhang Feng, Jeff Larrimore

NBER Working Paper No. 14458*
Issued in October 2008
NBER Program(s):   LS    PE    TWP

Using the Census Bureau's internal March Current Population Surveys (CPS) file, we construct and make available variances and cell means for all topcoded income values in the public-use version of these data. We then provide a procedure that allows researchers with access only to the public-use March CPS data to take advantage of this added information when imputing its topcoded income values. As an example of its value we show how our new procedure improves on existing imputation methods in the labor earnings inequality literature.

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