Explaining income-nonresponse: a case study by means of the British Household Panel Study (BHPS)

Abstract

Many validation studies deal with item nonresponse and measurement error in earning data. In this paper, we explore motives of respondents for the failure to reveal earnings using the British Household Panel Study (BHPS). The BHPS collects socio-economic information of private households in Great Britain. We explain the evolution of income-nonresponse in the BHPS and demonstrate the importance of a discrimination between refusing the income-statement or don’t know.