Abstract
Martha Duff, Edwin Robinson, Harland Shoemaker, and Brandon Schneider
(2002) "Redesign of Current Population Survey Raking to Control Totals."
Weighting for the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS) includes a
process called composite weighting. It is found that for highly correlated
items, a lower-variance estimate for the current month can be obtained by
also using data from previous months, suitably adjusted with an estimate
of change. A composite estimate of this type has been in use for the CPS
for decades, but a weighting procedure that could reproduce composite
estimates from just a single monthly data file was not implemented until
1997. The procedure now in place successively computes ratio adjustments
to weights so that estimates are forced to match three sets of composite
estimates of employment, unemployment, and not-in-labor-force: 1.) by
state, 2.) by ethnicity x gender x age, and 3.) by race x gender x age. A
new process to be implemented in January 2003 retains the three-way
iteration, but is designed based on a reevaluation of convergence
properties and interaction.
Last Modified Date: August 15, 2005
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