Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/193332 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 12038
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Recent studies linking household surveys to administrative records reveal high rates of misreporting of program receipt. We use the FoodAPS survey to examine whether the findings of these studies of general household surveys using one or two states generalize to a survey with a narrow focus and across many states. First, we study how reporting errors differ from other surveys. We find a lower rate of false negatives (failures to report true receipt) in FoodAPS, likely partly due to the shorter recall period of FoodAPS. Misreporting varies with household characteristics and between interviewers. Second, we examine geographic heterogeneity in survey error to assess whether we can extrapolate from linked data from a few states. We find systematic differences between states in unconditional error rates but no evidence of substantial differences conditional on common covariates. Thus, extrapolating error rates across states may yield more accurate receipt estimates than uncorrected survey estimates.
Subjects: 
survey error
administrative data
linked data
SNAP
JEL: 
C81
D31
I32
I38
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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