Research
Current projects:
The Persistence of Income Reporting Errors in Household Survey Data (with Christopher R. Bollinger)
We examine the extent and persistence of income misreporting in household survey data. We use a unique panel of survey data – the Austrian version of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) for 2008-2011 – which have been linked to individual administrative records on both state unemployment benefits and earnings. We find that misreporting earnings and benefits receipt in one year increases the probability to continue doing so in subsequent years. This causes large errors in transitions in and out of earnings and benefits receipt, leading to a biased picture of earnings dynamics and government programme participation. The persistent error pattern has important implications for policy and research, as we demonstrate by examining poverty dynamics. Since transitions in and out of benefits and earnings receipt are misreported, the survey income reports bias downward estimates for poverty persistence and entry, and upward estimates for poverty exit.
The Effectiveness of Social Protection in Five African Countries through Normal Times and Times of Crisis (with Katrin Gasior and Gemma Wright)
We study the effectiveness of social protection benefits in reducing income and consumption poverty in five Sub-Saharan African countries – Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia – in normal times and times of wide-spread economic crisis. Using tax-benefit microsimulation models with representative household survey data, first we estimate the coverage of benefits and their poverty-reducing effects in each country. Second, we study the ability of benefits to stabilise incomes and consumption in times of crisis by simulating hypothetical reductions to earnings and employment. Although the coverage of benefits is fairly high in Ghana and Zambia, the poverty-reducing impact of benefits in all five countries is low in normal times. The effectiveness of benefits to stabilise income and consumption in times of crisis is also limited because many benefits are linked to proxies of income, not income itself, or have tight eligibility criteria. Social assistance programmes are typically unresponsive to losses in household earnings and employment and provide limited support for unemployed people.
Automatic Stabilization: The Missing Welfare Dimension in Latin America (with Olivier Bargain and H. Xavier Jara, work in progress)