Developing Synthetic Worklife Earnings Estimates

Tiffany Julian, U.S. Census Bureau
Robert Kominski, U.S. Census Bureau

This poster details some of the analytic and methodology steps in developing a new set of synthetic estimates of the earnings one can expect over a “worklife”, given various levels of educational attainment using data from the 2006-2008 American Community Survey. In producing the estimates we are interested in a variety of technical and methodology issues that need to be addressed and resolved. These include: 1) determining if the effects of gender, race, Hipanic origin and age are critical categories in the estimation process. 2) determining the effects of distinct levels of educational attainment, toward determining appropriate points of collapse. 3) determining whether other factors such as nativity, language, disability belong. 4) evaluating the empirical differences between full-year, full-time workers, and those not in this status 5) Considering age groups outside the predefined “worklife” span of ages (25-64)