The fade-away effect of initial nonresponse in panel surveys : empirical results for EU-SILC

In a panel survey the participation behavior in later waves is different from that at the start. With register data that cover also the information for non-respondents one can observe a fade away of the distributional differences between the full sample, including nonresponders, and the respondent sample, without the nonrespondents. The mechanics of this effect may be explained by a Markov chain model. Under suitable regularity conditions the distribution on the state space converges to the steady state distribution of the chain, which is independent from the starting distribution of the chain. Therefore the fade-away effect is considered here as the swing-in into the steady state distribution. This is investigated in the current Working Paper for the Finnish subsample of EU-SILC for the household net-income. The velocity of the swing-in into the steady state distribution is investigated for 25 EU-SILC countries.