Counting the Labor Force with the Current Population Survey.
This article focuses on sources of bias in the Current Population Survey (CPS) and emphasizes the importance of measuring its impact in counting the labor force and in evaluating the accuracy of sample estimates. The accuracy of an estimate from the CPS is measured by the difference between the esti...
| Publicado en: | American Economic Review Vol. 69; no. 2; pp. 48 - 54 |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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American Economic Association
May79
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| Sumario: | This article focuses on sources of bias in the Current Population Survey (CPS) and emphasizes the importance of measuring its impact in counting the labor force and in evaluating the accuracy of sample estimates. The accuracy of an estimate from the CPS is measured by the difference between the estimate and the true value in the population. The ultimate goal is to design and implement the survey in such a way that this difference-- or total error--is minimized. The CPS is the cornerstone of the labor market information system, the only data base providing monthly statistics on the labor force and the best documented and most imitated survey in the world. The U.S. Bureau of Census prepares standard errors as measures of imprecision of the estimates. Although the Census Bureau has catalogued the various sources of bias in the survey, it has not included measurements of these in the error estimates. It is important that users of the data be made more aware of the nature of biases in the estimates and that the Bureau of Census proceed in the direction of eventually providing an approximation of the total error of an estimate--including imprecision and bias--which will tell more about how accurate is the count of the labor force from the CPS. |
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