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EXPLORING ATTRITION BIAS: THE CASE OF THE KHAYELITSHA PANEL STUDY (2000‐2004)
Author(s) -
Magruder Jeremy,
Nattrass Nicoli
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
south african journal of economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.502
H-Index - 31
eISSN - 1813-6982
pISSN - 0038-2280
DOI - 10.1111/j.1813-6982.2006.00096.x
Subject(s) - attrition , earnings , sample (material) , panel data , probit , demographic economics , probit model , economics , selection bias , econometrics , labour economics , statistics , mathematics , medicine , chemistry , accounting , dentistry , chromatography
Attrition bias is a problem for users of panel data. Researchers need to know what socio‐economic factors are associated with attrition, and whether this is of relevance for the kind of analysis they want to conduct. This paper discusses attrition bias in the 2000/2004 Khayelitsha panel study. It shows that women, shack‐dwellers and people living in smaller households are more likely to attrit, but that the impact of these variables on the probability of attrition is relatively small. The implications for labour‐market analysis are then explored using Mincerian earnings functions and a probit regression on whether respondents are wage‐employed or not. The coefficients generated using a restricted sample of non‐attritors do not differ significantly from those generated by the entire sample. This suggests that attrition bias in this particular data set is not a problem for this kind of labour market analysis.