Thomas F. Crossley

The Reliability of Self Assessed Health Status

The use of self-assessed health status (SAHS) as a measure of health is common in empirical research. We analyse a unique Australian survey in which a random sub-sample of respondents answer a standard self-assessed health question twice-before and after an additional set of health related questions. A total of 28% of respondents change their reported health status. Response reliability is related to age, income and occupation. We also compare the responses of these individuals to other respondents who are queried only once, to isolate effects of question order and mode of administration.

Unemployment insurance benefit levels and consumption changes

We use a survey of unemployed people to examine how a job loss impacts on household expenditures. The principal focus is on the effect of the level of income replacement provided by Unemployment Insurance. We restrict attention to a sub-sample of respondents who are still in their first spell of unemployment after six months. For this group we find large consumption falls, averaging about 16% of total expenditure. The actual fall depends on a variety of factors of which the most important is the pre-job loss ratio of the respondents income to household income. The effects of varying the replacement ratio are relatively small. We only find effects for those who did not have assets at the job loss and even for them the elasticity of total expenditure with respect to benefit is small. We conclude that for most of our sample, small changes in the benefit level will have no effect on living standards within the household and hence on other facets of behaviour such as job search, unemployment duration and the quality of any new job taken.

Shocks, stocks and socks: smoothing consumption over a temporary income loss

We investigate how households in temporarily straitened circumstances due to an unemployment spell cut back on expenditures and how they spend marginal dollars of unemployment insurance (UI) benefit. Our theoretical and empirical analyses emphasize the importance of allowing for the fact that households buy durable as well as non-durable goods. The theoretical analysis shows that in the short run households can cut back significantly on total expenditures without a significant fall in welfare if they concentrate their budget reductions on durables. We then present an empirical analysis based on a Canadian survey of workers who experienced a job separation. Exploiting changes in the unemployment insurance system over our sample period we show that cuts in UI benefits lead to reductions in total expenditure with a stronger impact on clothing than on food expenditures. Our empirical strategy allows that these expenditures may be non-separable from employment status. The effects we find are particularly strong for households with no liquid assets before the spell started. These qualitative findings are in precise agreement with the theoretical predictions. (JEL: D11, D12, D91, J65) (c) 2009 by the European Economic Association.

Physician Labour Supply in Canada: A Cohort Analysis

This paper employs a cohort analysis to examine the relative importance of different factors in explaining changes in the number of hours spent in direct patient care by Canadian general/family practitioners (GPs) over the period 1982-2003. Cohorts are defined by year of graduation from medical school. The results for male GPs indicate that there is little age effect on hours of direct patient care, especially among physicians aged 35-55, there is no strong cohort effect on hours of direct patient care, but there is a secular decline in hours of direct patient care over the period. The results for female GPs indicate that female physicians on average work fewer hours than male physicians, there is a clear age effect on hours of direct patient care, there is no strong cohort effect, and there has been little secular change in average hours of direct patient care. The changing behaviour of male GPs accounted for a greater proportion of the overall decline in hours of direct patient care from the 1980s through the mid-1990 s than did the growing proportion of female GPs in the physician stock.

Child Poverty in Canada

A 1989 all-party motion of parliament called for the elimination of child poverty in Canada by the year 2000. Despite a series of policy initiatives, recent reports suggest that the child poverty rate may now be comparable to that in 1989. The apparent persistence of child poverty in Canada might reflect socioeconomic developments, or something about the way that child poverty is measured. Using micro data covering the period 1986 to 2000 we find little support for these explanations.

Viewpoint: Measuring the well-being of the poor with income or consumption: a Canadian perspective

There is a long tradition of using consumption measures derived from Statistics Canadas household expenditures surveys to study material well-being, inequality, and poverty. We offer an introduction to this research. Income and consumption measures give different pictures of the patterns of material well-being in Canada, but the differences are not as large as in the US. We also provide a comparison to Meyer and Sullivans results on data quality. Canadian expenditure surveys are of high quality. Unique aspects of these surveys (variation in quality control measures over time and the possibility of comparing to income tax data) provide important insights into the quality of survey data on income and consumption. (Il existe une longue tradition dutilisation de mesures de consommation (drives de lenqute des dpenses des mnages de Statistiques Canada) pour mesurer le bien-tre matriel, lingalit et la pauvret. Les auteurs prsentent ces recherches. Les mesures de revenus et de consommation donnent des portraits diffrents des patterns de bien-tre matriel au Canada, mais les diffrences ne sont pas aussi importantes quaux Etats-Unis. On prsente une comparaison avec les rsultats de Meyer et Sullivan sur la qualit des donnes. Les enqutes sur les dpenses sont de haute qualit au Canada. Certains aspects uniques de ces enqutes (variation dans les mesures de contrle de qualit dans le temps et possibilit de comparer les donnes drives des rapports dimpt sur le revenu) fournissent des aperus importants sur la qualit des donnes denqutes sur le revenu et la consommation.)

Inference with Difference-in-Differences Revisited

Abstract A growing literature on inference in difference-in-differences (DiD) designs has been pessimistic about obtaining hypothesis tests of the correct size, particularly with few groups. We provide Monte Carlo evidence for four points: (i) it is possible to obtain tests of the correct size even with few groups, and in many settings very straightforward methods will achieve this; (ii) the main problem in DiD designs with grouped errors is instead low power to detect real effects; (iii) feasible GLS estimation combined with robust inference can increase power considerably whilst maintaining correct test size – again, even with few groups, and (iv) using OLS with robust inference can lead to a perverse relationship between power and panel length.

Job Loss, Credit Constraints and Consumption Growth

We use direct evidence on credit constraints to study their importance for household consumption growth and for welfare. We distentangle the direct effect on consumption growth of a currently binding credit constraint from the indirect effect of a potentially binding credit constraint that generates consumption risk. Our data are focused on job losers. We find that less than 5% of job losers experience a binding credit constraint, but those who do experience significant welfare losses, and consumption growth is 24% higher than for the rest of the population. However, even among those who are unconstrained and are able to borrow if needed, consumption responds to transitory income.

Immigrant Benefit Receipt Revisited: Sensitivity to the Choice of Survey Years and Model Specification

Receipt of unemployment insurance by immigrant men and social assistance by immigrant families are analysed using thirteen surveys from Canada. Estimates from a cohort fixed effects model are found to be sensitive to the choice of survey years. This is due to the mis-specification of the fixed effects model which is rejected when tested against a model allowing for separate year-since-migration effects by arrival cohort. The estimates from the more general model provide little evidence of higher receipt of these benefits, ceteris paribus, for more recent cohorts or that immigrants assimilate toward greater receipt of these benefits.

Viewpoint: Measuring the Well-being of the Poor with Income or Consumption: A Canadian Perspective (Mesurer Le Bien-Tre Des Pauvres Laide Du Revenu Et De La Consommation: Une Perspective Canadienne)

There is a long tradition of using consumption measures derived from Statistics Canadas household expenditures surveys to study material well-being, inequality, and poverty. We offer an introduction to this research. Income and consumption measures give different pictures of the patterns of material well-being in Canada, but the differences are not as large as in the US. We also provide a comparison to Meyer and Sullivans results on data quality. Canadian expenditure surveys are of high quality. Unique aspects of these surveys (variation in quality control measures over time and the possibility of comparing to income tax data) provide important insights into the quality of survey data on income and consumption. (Il existe une longue tradition dutilisation de mesures de consommation (drives de lenqute des dpenses des mnages de Statistiques Canada) pour mesurer le bien-tre matriel, lingalit et la pauvret. Les auteurs prsentent ces recherches. Les mesures de revenus et de consommation donnent des portraits diffrents des patterns de bien-tre matriel au Canada, mais les diffrences ne sont pas aussi importantes quaux Etats-Unis. On prsente une comparaison avec les rsultats de Meyer et Sullivan sur la qualit des donnes. Les enqutes sur les dpenses sont de haute qualit au Canada. Certains aspects uniques de ces enqutes (variation dans les mesures de contrle de qualit dans le temps et possibilit de comparer les donnes drives des rapports dimpt sur le revenu) fournissent des aperus importants sur la qualit des donnes denqutes sur le revenu et la consommation.)