IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF ECONOMIC DATA - LESSONS FROM THE HRS AND AHEAD

Missing data are an increasingly important problem in economic surveys , especially when trying to measure household wealth. However, some re latively simple new survey methods such as follow-up brackets appear t o appreciably improve the quality of household economic data. Brackets represent partial responses to asset questions and apparently signifi cantly reduce item nonresponse. Brackets also provide a remedy to deal with non-ignorable nonresponse bias, a critical problem with economic survey data.