410 – Social Issues, Trends, Inequality, and Employment
Detecting Politically Motivated Tampering with Workers' Labor Income in Survey Data1
John Angle
The Inequality Process Institute
There is no reason to think that labor income data in public use samples of the March Current Population Survey (CPS), a series dating back to March 1962, have been tampered with. So that series presents an opportunity to test a method of detecting tampering with labor income data. A tampering scenario: a recently elected national chief executive, aspiring to autocracy, must win the next election before dispensing with fair elections. Good news about the labor incomes of less skilled workers, the aspiring autocrat's electoral base, is a prerequisite. The government's statistics agency, controlled by the aspiring autocrat, continues to issue public use samples while it tampers with labor income data. Economists and survey statisticians may discern tell-tale evidence of tampering. They and it are politically dismissible. The Inequality Process (IP) is a model of labor income statistics. It implies there are only two drivers of change in the labor income distribution of a national population and how the distribution changes. Ad hoc tampering with labor income data is likely to be clearly highlighted by violation of IP invariances.