Panel Study of Income Dynamics

There are many ways that nationally-representative samples drawn for panel surveys can become non-representative over time. For example, selective attrition and non-response, immigration, and shortcomings in the initial sample may lead to a divergence of the panel sample from the corresponding population it seeks to represent. Although initial cross-sectional weights together with attrition weights in later waves may correct for some sources of non-representativeness, they do not correct for all possible sources. Furthermore, a periodic reassessment of sample representativeness is important for understanding the cumulative effects of attrition and immigration and determining whether additional measures are necessary to correct for declining representativeness and coverage. In this technical report, we assess the national representativeness of the 2007 sample of children in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)—a total of approximately 7,100 children aged 0–17 years of age. We evaluated the national coverage of the PSID child sample using microdata from the American Community Survey (ACS) and a new statistical technique called generalized boosted regression models. The ACS provides a gold-standard comparison base