Survey Mode Effects on Income Inequality Measurement

• Activity Number: 590
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 7, 2013 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): Peter Lindner*+ and Pirmin Fessler and Maximilian Kasy
• Companies: Oesterreichische Nationalbank and Oesterreichische Nationalbank and Harvard University
• Keywords: Survey Methodology ; Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing ; Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing ; Unconditional Distribution ; Non-Parametric Re-Weighting

Abstract

Exploiting a quasi-experiment we use non-parametric re-weighting and regression approaches to estimate the causal effect of the interview method on item-nonresponse and the unconditional observed income distribution. The minor change of interviewing households via the telephone instead of personally leads to major changes in item non-response, which increases by roughly 20% - 30%. The observed distribution of income is compressed translating to a decrease in the Gini coefficient by about 10%. Commonly used rankings of countries by Gini coefficients of the income distribution might largely be an artifact of different survey techniques as the interview mode than true differences in income inequality.