This research considers the role of income for subjective longevity assessments using the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances. Treating subjective health and longevity assessments as jointly determined is important to understanding the role of income for both judgments. Income has a positive effect on health judgments and does not have a statistically significant effect on subjective longevity when health is rated as excellent or in excellent or good composite. Using analysis from the Health and Retirement Survey together with the SCF indicated that surveys framing the longevity question in direct or probabilistic terms can be complementary in estimating subjective longevity.

This paper uses Piketty, Saez, and Zucman's income measures that are constructed to be consistent with distributional national accounts from 1966 to 2019. Three inequality indexes and two strategies for estimating them were evaluated using the pre-tax and post-tax income measures. The indexes were: the Gini coefficient, mean logarithmic deviation, and the Theil index. The results imply that the conclusion on trends in income inequality depends on the measure used. Using the index recommended as reflecting changes in the full distribution of income, the mean logarithmic deviation, both model-based estimates and distribution-free estimates suggest income inequality at the end of the PSZ sample (2019) was about the same as it was in 1966.

This paper uses the responses to questions about charitable contributions from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) between 1992 and 2022 to consider the rates of US households contributing money or time to charitable organizations.The fraction donating $500 or more remained relatively constant over this period, with about 47% answering they had donated in both 1991 and 2021.The fraction of households volunteering time declined consistently after 2005 from 34% to 26%.When the samples are restricted to those giving financially or those volunteering, the results confirm the relationship between giving time or money depends on people's other charitable behaviors.

This paper exploits a novel reform in Idaho to measure the economic value created by clarifying property rights for water. Between 1987–2014, the Snake River Basin adjudication determined who had legal rights to use water, covering 139,000 water rights and 90% of Idaho's water use. Using differences in the timing of adjudication between different sub-basins, we find that adjudication caused a 140% increase in the frequency of water right trades and transfers; that these trades and transfers moved water to parcels of land more suitable for irrigated agriculture; that water-use intensity remains unchanged after adjudication; and that adjudication prompts irrigators, especially those owning surface water rights, to shift from lower-value to higher-value land uses. These changes create benefits with a present value of at least $402.7 million, outweighing the one-time fixed cost of $94 million Idaho spent on adjudication.

Based on Internal Revenue Service data in 2019, the ranking of the estimated distributions for the median adjusted gross income (AGI), using binned data at the state level, indicates the highest income levels for those claiming energy tax credits and next highest for those with student loan interest deductions. The average of each group's median income exceeds that of all taxpayers by at least $10,000. As a result, neither of these new programs can be supported on purely equity grounds.

This article provides the first controlled evaluation of how different information materials explaining the risks from radon influenced people's perceptions of these risks. Using a panel study, it was possible to observe how stated risk perceptions responded to information about indoor radon concentrations and brochures explaining the radon readings. The findings indicate that risk communication policies can be effective in modifying risk perceptions. Moreover, they have three specific implications for radon policy: (1) Public officials should not adopt strategies that provide minimal risk information to the public as a means of avoiding undue alarm, for this can have the reverse effect; (2) measures of the effectiveness of risk communication will depend on how education and behavior change are defined; (3} categorical guidelines about risk without quantitative information can lead people to treat the levels as thresholds, creating an artificial discontinuity in their responses to small changes in risk perceptions.

The U.S. National Park Service and other agencies argue that our recreation lands face a crisis of deferred maintenance. This article evaluates two proposals for fund-ing public lands: increasing gate fees and taxing recreational gear. It analyzes the joint welfare effects of such taxes and the services supported by the revenue. It shows that when the taxed goods and the public service are weak complements, there is a simple, sufficient statistic determining whether the joint effect increases welfare for both consumers and sell-ers: the quantity demanded for the taxed good increases. We illustrate these results with data for recreational services. (JEL H41, Q51)

This paper reports the first comparison of subjective and technical risk estimates for a real source of risk, exposure to radon. The analysis also considers the effects of the information framing for this comparison of risk estimates. The results suggest that the framing of the risk explanations does affect how individuals adjusted their subjective risk perceptions in response to differences in the amount and duration of their radon exposures. Thus, our findings support the need to describe the role of cognitive factors involved in processing risk information within economic models of the formation of risk perceptions.

This paper proposes the use of consumers' preferences in formulating policies for keeping secret information about terrorist activities and threats that might compromise future security. We report the results from two surveys indicating that support for government secrecy varies across situations depending on the threat and context. A majority of respondents preferred full disclosure of some information related to terrorist threats regardless of the consequences for specific industries or future threats, in particular threats involving attacks on commercial airlines. However a majority of respondents were willing to allow government authorities to withhold information about the details of threats to the financial system and to buildings if revealing the information might compromise future investigations. While the public generally recognizes the importance of keeping some information secret, a democratically elected government should seek to understand the preferences of its citizens on important policy issues related to public safety and security.

This chapter provides the context for the development of the research reported in this volume, describing how it evolved over time. It provides a more detailed perspective on how the information materials were developed initially for the research on valuing reductions in the risks of being exposed to hazardous wastes. The insights learned from that activity are then connected to the field experiments undertaken for private and public messaging associated with radon risk and the other sources of risk considered in this research.

Featuring real world examples of how risk information affects public choices, The Economics of Environmental Risk expertly demonstrates that policymakers need to consider how people learn about those risks. Offering insights into examples such as hazardous waste, radon, smoking, hurricanes and terrorist threats over the past four decades, this intuitive book illustrates environmental risks and the choices made to mitigate the potential effects.

Most discussions of policies for climate adaptation have focused on augmenting the capacity of natural and/or manmade systems to provide the services that are reduced or made more variable because of climate change. This orientation presumes those in charge can "guess" what is best in advance and know exactly where each unit of added capacity will be needed. Alternatively, policy could rely on developing mechanisms that give people and firms incentives to respond on their own to changes in the services provided by the climate system. These strategies could be designed in advance and create pre'Äêpositioned, incentive'Äêbased policies. The policies adapt based on the actions of all agents as well as changes over time or space in any other reasonably predictable conditions that may influence people's choices but are outside their control.

Purchase - $5 NBER Subscribers Download Add Paper to My Library Share: Permalink Using these links will ensure access to this page indefinitely Copy URL Using Administrative Data to Impute Income Non-Response in Household Surveys NBER Working Paper No. w30420 21 Pages Posted: 5 Sep 2022 Last revised: 9 Sep 2022 See all articles by V. Kerry SmithV. Kerry SmithArizona State University (ASU) - Economics Department; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)Michael WelshSaint Petersburg College - Independent ConsultantRichard T. CarsonUniversity of California, San Diego (UCSD) - Department of EconomicsStanley PresserUniversity of Maryland Date Written: September 2022 Abstract Income is simultaneously one of the most important variables used by economists and the variable most likely to be missing due to item non-response. While observations that are missing income responses are often dropped from analyses, such treatment is usually inappropriate. More appropriate solutions rely on imputation based on either covariates (e.g., age and education) measured in the survey or on spatial estimates (most often for zip codes) from the American Community Survey. We describe a new spatially-based alternative using publicly available Internal Revenue Service tax data that allows estimates of zip code's income distribution.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org. Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation Smith, V. Kerry and Welsh, Michael and Carson, Richard T. and Presser, Stanley, Using Administrative Data to Impute Income Non-Response in Household Surveys (September 2022). NBER Working Paper No. w30420, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4210007 V. Kerry Smith (Contact Author) Arizona State University (ASU) - Economics Department ( email ) Tempe, AZ 85287-3806United States National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) 1050 Massachusetts AvenueCambridge, MA 02138United States Michael Welsh Saint Petersburg College - Independent Consultant ( email ) Russia Richard T. Carson University of California, San Diego (UCSD) - Department of Economics ( email ) 9500 Gilman DriveLa Jolla, CA 92093-0508United States619-534-6319 (Phone)619-534-7655 (Fax) Stanley Presser University of Maryland ( email ) College ParkCollege Park, MD 20742United States Purchase - $5 NBER Subscribers Download Do you have negative results from your research you'd like to share? Submit Negative Results Paper statistics Downloads 5 Abstract Views 118 PlumX Metrics Related eJournals NBER Working Paper Series Follow NBER Working Paper Series Subscribe to this free journal for more curated articles on this topic FOLLOWERS 12,270 PAPERS 32,498 Feedback Feedback to SSRN Feedback (required) Email (required) Submit If you need immediate assistance, call 877-SSRNHelp (877 777 6435) in the United States, or +1 212 448 2500 outside of the United States, 8:30AM to 6:00PM U.S. Eastern, Monday - Friday.

Tiebout's [1956] analysis of why households select communities is important to predictions for income distributions. We use IRS records at the zip code level from 2009 to 2017 to compare the real median incomes of homeowners in areas with flooding risks to adjacent areas. The real income was consistently higher for households in shoreline locations in 36% of the areas with significant flood risks compared to the adjoining locations. An equal percentage (36%) had no significant difference. In the remainder (28%), the real median incomes are lower in shoreline locations compared to adjoining zip codes.

The purpose of this paper is to consider how measures of income inequality change over time when the geographic scale of the assessment is taken into account. Using Internal Revenue Service (IRS) records at the state level for the adjusted gross income by tax paying unit and the Gini coefficient (GC), it is clear geography matters. Comparing the estimates of the Gini coefficient at the national level in 2008, 2016, and 2018 (the last year with IRS data available), I find there are small, but statistically significant, increases in income inequality. Comparing GC estimates for 2008 to 2016 at the state level, there is a difference in the direction of the significant changes in the estimated Gini coefficients. 58.8% of the states experienced significant increases in inequality comparing these two years, while 27.4% had significant decreases. This pattern reverses comparing 2016 to 2018. 43.1% experienced statistically significant decreases and 35.3% significant increases.

“Use-it-or-lose-it” requirements should be reconsidered

This paper calls for re-focusing the analysis of existing results to evaluate whether there are stable ratios of use value to total willingness to pay for improvements in different types of environmental resources. The objective is to develop a screening tool to determine if decisions about the assumed number of users versus nonusers of a resource are likely to be important to aggregate benefit measures for changes in the amount or quality of different environmental resources. Four sets of applications involving different aspects of water resources are considered: nutrients in the Neuse River affecting the Albemarle-Pamlico Estuary; nutrients in the Chesapeake Bay; whitewater rafting on the Colorado River; and the Deepwater Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The findings suggest a need to add the evaluation of these ratios to the research agenda in benefits transfer.

A growing body of research has found that linking products to charitable causes enhances sellers' reputations. This paper tests with a field experiment whether the use of the option of giving to charity to signal genuine intentions in mail surveys can enhance the effectiveness of small financial incentives. We find that they do significantly increase individuals' responsiveness to the differences in the amount of the incentives. Cash incentives lead to an approximated constant response rate. Adding the option to donate the incentive to a specific charity significantly increases the effect of the financial incentive on the likelihood of responding.

This paper develops a new method for evaluating benefit estimates prepared for major environmental rules and addresses three criticisms of existing practices: (1) using benefit estimates from the literature without adjusting for the conceptual differences underlying their meaning, (2) ignoring feedback effects of policy, and (3) failing to recognize the potential for economy-wide effects of large policies. Our approach adapts a general equilibrium framework characteristic of macroeconomic models and focuses on the effects of introducing nonmarket environmental services into the aggregate or "stand-in" preference function. No recent policies illustrate how it can be used to assess economy-wide effects.