The Sensitivity of Economic Statistics to Coding Errors in Personal Identifiers

In this paper, we describe the sensitivity of small-cell flow statistics to coding errors in the identity of the underlying entities. Specifically, we present results based on a comparison of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI) before and after correcting for such errors in SSN-based identifiers in the underlying individual wage records. The correction used involves a novel application of existing statistical matching techniques. It is found that even a very conservative correction procedure has a sizable impact on the statistics. The average bias ranges from 0.25 percent up to 15 percent for flow statistics, and up to 5 percent for payroll aggregates.