Policy makers relying on public-use Current Population Survey (CPS) data to measure the success of government policies in overcoming the gap in economic well-being between working-age men with and without disabilities will understate the mean income of both and overstate the relative economic well-being of the former. This understatement results from topcoding in the public-use CPS, which suppresses top incomes in the data set. Using cell means with the public-use CPS, the authors better correct for these topcoding problems than alternate methods and provide a relative economic well-being series (1980—2006) based on the mean incomes of working-age men with and without disabilities.
Acemoglu, D., & Angrist, J. ( 2001). Consequences of employment protection? The case of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Journal of Political Economy , 109(5), 915-957.
2.
Burkhauser, R.V., Butler, J.S., Feng, S., & Houtenville, A.J. (2004). Long term trends in earnings inequality: What the CPS can tell us. Economic Letters, 82(2), 295-299.
3.
Burkhauser, R.V., Couch, K.A., Houtenville, A.J., & Rovba, L. ( 2004). Income inequality in the 1990s: Re-forging a lost relationship ? Journal of Income Distribution, 12(3/4), 8-35.
4.
Burkhauser, R.V., Feng, S., & Jenkins, S. ( 2009). Using a P90/P10 ratio to measure inequality trends with the public use Current Population Survey: A view from inside the Census Bureau vaults. The Review of Income and Wealth, 55(1), 166-185.
5.
Burkhauser, R.V., Feng, S., Jenkins, S., & Larrimore, J. ( 2008). Trends in United States income inequality using the internal March Current Population Survey: The importance of controlling for censoring (NBER Working Paper No. w14247). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research .
6.
Feng, S., Burkhauser, R.V., & Butler, J.S. ( 2006). Levels and long-term trends in earnings inequality: Overcoming Current Population Survey censoring problems using the GB2 distribution. Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 24(1), 57-62.
7.
Gottschalk, P., & Danziger, S. ( 2005). Inequality of wage rates, earnings and family income in the United States, 1975-2002. The Review of Income and Wealth, 51(2), 231-254.
8.
Hotchkiss, J.L. ( 2004). A closer look at the employment impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Journal of Human Resources, 39, 887-911.
9.
Houtenville, A. J., Weathers, R., Stapleton, D. C., & Burkhauser, R. V. (Eds.). (2009). Counting working-age people with disabilities: What current data tell us and options for improvement. Kalamazoo, MI: W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
10.
Larrimore, J., Burkhauser, R.V., Feng, S., & Zayatz, L. ( 2008). Consistent cell means for topcoded incomes in the public use March CPS (1975-2004). Journal of Economic and Social Measurement, 33(2/3), 89-128.
11.
Levy, F., & Murnane, R.J. ( 1992). U.S. earnings levels and earnings inequality: A review of recent trends and proposed explanations. Journal of Economic Literature, 30(3), 1333-1381.
12.
Stapleton, D. C., & Burkhauser, R. V. (Eds.). (2003). The decline in employment of people with disabilities: A policy puzzle. Kalamazoo, MI: W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
13.
Stewart, K.J., & Reed, S.B. ( 1999). CPI research series using current methods, 1979-98. Monthly Labor Review, 122(6), 29-38.
14.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2007). Income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the United States: 2006 (Current Population Reports, Consumer Income P60-233)Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
15.
Welniak, E.J. ( 2003). Measuring household income inequality using the CPS. In J. Dalton & B. Kilss (Eds.), Special studies in federal tax statistics 2003 (pp. 3-11). Washington, DC: Statistics of Income Directorate, Internal Revenue Service.
