Errors in Recalling Childhood Socio-economic Status: The Role of Anchoring and Household Formation in South Africa

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• 作者：Dieter von Fintel ; Dorrit Posel
• 关键词：Retrospective data ; Socio ; economic status ; Childhood reach ; Anchoring
• 刊名：Social Indicators Research
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：March 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：126
• 期：1
• 页码：119-140
• 全文大小：422 KB
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• 作者单位：Dieter von Fintel (1) (2)
  Dorrit Posel (3)
  
  1. Department of Economics and Research on Socioeconomic Policy (ReSEP), Stellenbosch University, Private Bag X01, Matieland, 7602, South Africa
  2. Institute for the Study of Labour (IZA), Bonn, Germany
  3. Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Memorial Tower Building, Durban, 4041, South Africa
  
• 刊物类别：Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
• 刊物主题：Social Sciences
  Sociology
  Quality of Life Research
  Microeconomics
  Public Health
  Human Geography
  
• 出版者：Springer Netherlands
• ISSN：1573-0921

文摘

In the absence of longitudinal data that track individuals over an extended period of time, information on childhood socio-economic status can be provided by questions that ask adults to recall their parents’ education or their economic status at childhood. The usefulness of these data, however, requires that people are willing to report this information, and that these reports do not vary systematically over time, for example in response to changes in current circumstances. In this paper, we evaluate recall data for South Africa, collected from the same adults in the first two waves of a national panel survey. We show that the data, particularly on father’s education, are compromised by very low and selective response, reflecting the fragmented nature of many South African families. Among those who do provide information, parental education is reported more consistently over time than the subjective appraisals of childhood economic status. However, we find also that both sets of indicators are sensitive to changes in current income, which would be consistent with anchoring effects. Furthermore changes in subjective appraisals of the past are highly correlated with changes in subjective appraisals of the present.