The Under-Reporting of Transfers in Household Surveys: Its Nature and Consequences

This research was supported in part by the U.S. Social Security Administration through grant #10-M-98363 -1-01 to the National Bureau of Economic Research as part of the SSA Retirement Research Consortium and by the Economic Research Service of the USDA through Cooperative Research Agreement 58-5000- 6-0106. The findings and conclusions expressed are solely those of the authors and do not represent the views of the SSA, the ERS or any agency of the Federal Government, or the NBER. We thank participants at the Princeton Data Improvement Initiative Conference, the American Economic Association Annual Meetings, the Washington Statistical Society, seminars at the Economic Research Service, the Institute for Social Research and the University of Chicago for their comments, and Stephen Issacson, Karen Peko and the staff at the Food and Nutrition Service, Kevin Stapleton at the Department of Labor, and Steve Heeringa at the PSID Statistical Design Group for help with data. We also thank Richard Bavier, Charles Pierret, Kalman Rupp, Robert Schoeni, and Frank Stafford for their helpful suggestions. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.