Date:
Location:
This Week's Speaker
Ross Mattheis (Department of Economics), "Spurious Mobility in Imperfectly Linked Data Trials" (joint with Jiafeng Chen)
Abstract
Estimating intergenerational mobility often requires linking data across multiple sources. However, mistakes in record linkage can introduce biases in subsequent estimates. This paper re-examines the history of intergenerational mobility in the United States with emphasis on bias from imperfectly linked data. In particular, data corrupted by incorrect links will typically attenuate estimates of linear estimands towards zero. When the estimand is the intergenerational elasticity of status, this bias will tend to exaggerate levels of mobility. We propose two complementary methods to address bias from imperfectly linked data. Building on a large literature on Bayesian entity resolution, our first approach samples from a convenience prior and reports the ratio of the posterior and implicit prior distributions for the target parameter. Our second approach takes advantage of the availability of repeated measurements and identification results in settings with misclassified data due to Hu (2008). Consistent with bias from data-corruption, our estimates suggest that levels of mobility in the U.S. were lower than previously believed, with conventional estimates of the father-son elasticity of occupation status 10% to 40% lower than our estimates. The gap between ours and conventional estimates is largest in the mid-nineteenth century and declines in more recent years, resulting in relatively stable levels of mobility over the period.
The Applied Statistics Workshop (Gov 3009) meets all academic year, Wednesdays, 12pm-1:30pm, in CGIS K354. This workshop is a forum for advanced graduate students, faculty, and visiting scholars to present and discuss methodological or empirical work in progress in an interdisciplinary setting. The workshop features a tour of Harvard's statistical innovations and applications with weekly stops in different fields and disciplines and includes occasional presentations by invited speakers.
More information is available at the Gov 3009 website: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/applied.stats.workshop-gov3009
All interested Harvard affiliates are invited to attend.