Journal of Economic and Social Measurement

In this paper, we develop a method for adjusting poverty rates for geographic differences in cost of living. Although interarea differences in cost of living affect consumers in terms of their buying power, poverty rates and federal assistance guidelines have not been adjusted for these differences. Without such adjustment, poverty rates are underestimated in high cost areas and overestimated where cost is lower. Using estimates of area cost-of-living indices and data on income distribution, we adjusted poverty rates assuming log-normal and Pareto income distributions. Poverty rates were compared with and without cost-of-living adjustment for major U.S. cities. We found that poverty rates among Medicare beneficiaries are considerably lower when we adjust for geographic cost-of-living differences.

The MEPS household component was designed to produce national and regional estimates of the health care utilization, expenditures, sources of payment and insurance coverage of the U.S. civilian non-institutionalized population for calendar year 1996. In this paper, the characteristics of the households that did not respond to the first round of data collection for the 1996 MEPS are identified and contrasted with those that participated in the survey. As a consequence of the 1996 MEPS sample linkage to the 1995 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), detailed information on the socio-demographic and health characteristics of both responding and nonresponding households was available to inform the investigation. The results of this study informed the adjustments implemented to correct for survey nonresponse. The paper also includes a presentation of the household level nonresponse adjustment estimation strategy that was implemented to improve the accuracy of MEPS survey estimates. Implications of study findings on strategies for reducing the overall level of survey nonresponse and for better targeting interviewer efforts are also discussed.

This article examines the National Longitudinal Surveys of Labor Market Experience, commonly called the NLS. The article first provides a brief overview of the information available in these long-running surveys. Second, it discusses the contributions of NLS-based research to various topics within the field of economics. Finally, it summarizes topics within the NLS questionnaires that have expanded recently to accommodate the changing circumstances of the cohorts. (JEL C81, J00)