Work and earnings of low-skilled women: Do employee and employer reports provide consistent information?

Abstract

The employment and earnings effects of the state-oriented federal welfare reform legislation of 1996 have been extensively studied using either survey or administrative data. Because information may differ substantially across these sources, it is difficult both to identify the true effects of these interventions and to compare evaluation estimates of these interventions that rely on these different data sources. This paper uses data gathered as part of the Wisconsin Child Support Demonstration Evaluation to examine the extent to which administrative (unemployment insurance) and survey records on employment and earnings for a sample of low-skilled women are congruent. Our findings suggest that there are substantial differences in both mean earnings and mean employment rates between survey and unemployment insurance (UI) data. We identify the extent to which these disparities can be explained by differences between these data sources in the definition of earnings or the method of data collection. We also examine the differences between UI and survey sources in estimates of employment and earnings growth among low-skilled women.