Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: P. Jenkins, Stephen
Author-Name: V. Burkhauser, Richard
Author-Name: Feng, Shuaizhang
Title: Using the P90/P10 index to measure US inquality trends with current population survey data: a view from inside the Census Bureau vaults
Abstract: The March Current Population Survey (CPS) is the primary data source for estimation of levels and trends in labor earnings and income inequality in the USA. Time-inconsistency problems related to top coding in theses data have led many researchers to use the ratio of the 90th and 10th percentiles of these distributions (P90/P10) rather than a more traditional summary measure of inequality. With access to public use and restricted-access internal CPS data, and bounding methods, we show that using P90/P10 does not completely obviate time-inconsistency problems, especially for household income inequality trends. Using internal data, we create consistent cell mean values for all top-coded public use values that, when used with public use data, closely track inequality trends in labor earnings and household income using internal data. But estimates of longer-term inequality trends with these corrected data based on P90/P10 differ from those based on the Gini coefficient. The choice of inequality measure matters.

Creation-Date: 20070602
Number: 2007-14
Publication-Status: published
File-URL: https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/files/working-papers/iser/2007-14.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:ese:iserwp:2007-14