Analysis

Description:

The attractiveness of the Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) rests on its close similarity to a normal experimental design. On the other hand, it is of limited applicability since it is not often the case that units are assigned to the treatment group on the basis of an observable (to the analyst) pre-program measure. Besides, it only allows identification of the mean impact on a very specific subpopulation. In this technical paper, we show that the RDD straightforwardly generalizes to the instances in which the units' eligibility is established on an observable pre-program measure with eligible units allowed to freely self-select into the program. This set-up also proves to be very convenient for building a specification test on conventional non-experimental estimators of the program mean impact. The data requirements are clearly described.

Description:

In 1961, the European Commission launched a harmonized qualitative survey program to the consumers and the heads of companies (industry, services, construction, retail trade, investments) that covers more than 40 countries today. These qualitative surveys are aimed at understanding the economic situation of these companies. Results are available a few days after the end of the reference period, well before the results of the quantitative surveys.

Although qualitative, these surveys have quickly become an essential tool of the cyclical diagnosis and of the short-term economic forecast. This product shows how these surveys are used by the European Commission, in particular by the Directorate-General for economic and financial Affairs (DG ECFIN) and the Statistical Office of the European Communities (EUROSTAT), to evaluate the economic situation of the Euro zone.

The first part of this product briefly presents the harmonized European business and consumer survey program. In the second part, we look at how DG ECFIN calculates a coincident indicator of the economic activity, using a dynamic factorial analysis of the questions of the survey in industry. This type of indicator makes it possible, in addition, to study the convergence of the economic cycles of the member states. The quantitative short-term indicators for the Euro zone are often criticized for the delay with which they are published. In the third part, we look at how EUROSTAT plans to publish flash estimates of the industrial product price index (IPPI) resulting from econometric models integrating the business survey series. Lastly, we show how these surveys can be used to forecast the gross domestic product (GDP) and to define proxies for some non-available key indicators (new orders in industry, etc.).

Description:

This project seeks to shed light not only on the degree to which individuals are stuck in the low-income range, but also on those who have sufficient opportunity to move into the upper part of the income distribution. It also seeks to compare patterns of mobility through the income distribution in North America and Europe, shedding light on the impact of different models of integration. Cross-National Equivalent File data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) for the United Kingdom, the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) for Germany, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) for the United States and the Survey of Labour Income Dynamics (SLID) for Canada offer a comparative analysis of the dynamics of household income during the 1990s, paying particular attention to both low- and high-income dynamics. Canadian administrative data drawn from income tax files are also used. These panel datasets range in length from six years (for the SLID) to almost 20 years (for the PSID and the Canadian administrative data). The analysis focuses on developments during the 1990s, but also explores the sensitivity of the results to changes in the length of the period analysed.

The analysis begins by offering a broad descriptive overview of the major characteristics and events (demographic versus labour market) that determine levels and changes in adjusted household incomes. Attention is paid to movements into and out of low- and high- income ranges. A number of definitions are used, incorporating absolute and relative notions of poverty. The sensitivity of the results to the use of various equivalence scales is examined. An overview offers a broad picture of the state of household income in each country and the relative roles of family structure, the labour market and welfare state in determining income mobility. The paper employs discrete time-hazard methods to model the dynamics of entry to and exit from both low and high income.

Both observed and unobserved heterogeneity are controlled for with the intention of highlighting differences in the determinants of the transition rates between the countries. This is done in a way that assesses the importance of the relative roles of family, market and state. Attention is also paid to important institutional changes, most notably the increasing integration of product and labour markets in North America and Europe.

Description:

Practitioners often use data collected from complex surveys (such as labour force and health surveys involving stratified cluster sampling) to fit logistic regression and other models of interest. A great deal of effort over the last two decades has been spent on developing methods to analyse survey data that take account of design features. This paper looks at an alternative method known as inverse sampling.

Specialized programs, such as SUDAAN and WESVAR, are also available to implement some of the methods developed to take into account the design features. However, these methods require additional information such as survey weights, design effects or cluster identification of microdata and thus, another method is necessary.

Inverse sampling (Hinkins et al., Survey Methodology, 1977) provides an alternative approach by undoing the complex data structures so that standard methods can be applied. Repeated subsamples with simple random structure are drawn and each subsample is analysed by standard methods and is combined to increase the efficiency. Although computer-intensive, this method has the potential to preserve confidentiality of microdata files. A drawback of the method is that it can lead to biased estimates of regression parameters when the subsample sizes are small (as in the case of stratified cluster sampling).

In this paper, we propose using the estimating equation approach that combines the subsamples before estimation and thus leads to nearly unbiased estimates of regression parameters regardless of subsample sizes. This method is computationally less intensive than the original method. We apply the method to cluster-correlated data generated from a nested error linear regression model to illustrate its advantages. A real dataset from a Statistics Canada survey will also be analysed using the estimating equation method.

Description:

Survey sampling is a statistical domain that has been slow to take advantage of flexible regression methods. In this technical paper, two approaches are discussed that could be used to make these regression methods accessible: adapt the techniques to the complex survey design that has been used or sample the survey data so that the standard techniques are applicable.

In following the former route, we introduce techniques that account for the complex survey structure of the data for scatterplot smoothing and additive models. The use of penalized least squares in the sampling context is studied as a tool for the analysis of a general trend in a finite population. We focus on smooth regression with a normal error model. Ties in covariates abound for large scale surveys resulting in the application of scatterplot smoothers to means. The estimation of smooths (for example, smoothing splines) depends on the sampling design only via the sampling weights, meaning that standard software can be used for estimation. Inference for these curves is more challenging, as a result of correlations induced by the sampling design. We propose and illustrate tests that account for the sampling design. Illustrative examples are given using the Ontario health survey, including scatterplot smoothing, additive models and model diagnostics. In an attempt to resolve the problem by appropriate sampling of the survey data file, we discuss some of the hurdles that are faced when using this approach.

Description:

Analyses of data from social and economic surveys sometimes use generalized variance function models to approximate the design variance of point estimators of population means and proportions. Analysts may use the resulting standard error estimates to compute associated confidence intervals or test statistics for the means and proportions of interest. In comparison with design-based variance estimators computed directly from survey microdata, generalized variance function models have several potential advantages, as will be discussed in this paper, including operational simplicity; increased stability of standard errors; and, for cases involving public-use datasets, reduction of disclosure limitation problems arising from the public release of stratum and cluster indicators.

These potential advantages, however, may be offset in part by several inferential issues. First, the properties of inferential statistics based on generalized variance functions (e.g., confidence interval coverage rates and widths) depend heavily on the relative empirical magnitudes of the components of variability associated, respectively, with:

(a) the random selection of a subset of items used in estimation of the generalized variance function model(b) the selection of sample units under a complex sample design (c) the lack of fit of the generalized variance function model (d) the generation of a finite population under a superpopulation model.

Second, under conditions, one may link each of components (a) through (d) with different empirical measures of the predictive adequacy of a generalized variance function model. Consequently, these measures of predictive adequacy can offer us some insight into the extent to which a given generalized variance function model may be appropriate for inferential use in specific applications.

Some of the proposed diagnostics are applied to data from the US Survey of Doctoral Recipients and the US Current Employment Survey. For the Survey of Doctoral Recipients, components (a), (c) and (d) are of principal concern. For the Current Employment Survey, components (b), (c) and (d) receive principal attention, and the availability of population microdata allow the development of especially detailed models for components (b) and (c).

Description:

Closing remarks

Description:

Opening remarks of the Symposium 2002: Modelling Survey Data for Social and Economic Research, presented by David Binder.

Description:

Keynote Address.

Description:

This study examines trends in the internal migration of the Canadian-born and long-term immigrants into and out of Canada's three largest metropolitan areas.

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: Release published in The Daily – Statistics Canada’s official release bulletin

Description: At Statistics Netherlands (SN) for some economic sectors two partly-independent intra-annual turnover index series are available: a monthly series based on survey data and a quarterly series based on value added tax data for the smaller units and re-used survey data for the other units. SN aims to benchmark the monthly turnover index series to the quarterly census data on a quarterly basis. This cannot currently be done because the tax data has a different quarterly pattern: the turnover is relatively large in the fourth quarter of the year and smaller in the first quarter. With the current study we aim to describe this deviating quarterly pattern at micro level. In the past we developed a mixture model using absolute turnover levels that could explain part of the quarterly patterns. Because the absolute turnover levels differ between the two series, in the current study we use a model based on relative quarterly turnover levels within a year.

Description: Respondents to typical household surveys tend to significantly underreport their potential use of food aid distributed by associations. This underreporting is most likely related to the social stigma felt by people experiencing great financial difficulty. As a result, survey estimates of the number of recipients of that aid are much lower than the direct counts from the associations. Those counts tend to overestimate due to double counting. Through its adapted protocol, the Enquête Aide alimentaire (EAA) collected in late 2021 in France at a sample of sites of food aid distribution associations, controls the biases that affect the other sources and determines to what extent this aid is used.

Description: Ethnic minorities are often underrepresented in survey research, due to the challenges many researchers face in including these populations. While some studies discuss several methods in comparison, few have directly compared these methods empirically, leaving researchers seeking to include ethnic minorities in their studies unsure of their best options. In this article, I briefly review the methodological and ethical reasons for increasing ethnic minority representation in social science research, as well as challenges of doing so. I then present findings from ten studies which empirically compare methods of sampling and/or recruiting ethnic minority individuals. Finally, I discuss some implications for future research.

Description: We present design-based Horvitz-Thompson and multiplicity estimators of the population size, as well as of the total and mean of a response variable associated with the elements of a hidden population to be used with the link-tracing sampling variant proposed by Félix-Medina and Thompson (2004). Since the computation of the estimators requires to know the inclusion probabilities of the sampled people, but they are unknown, we propose a Bayesian model which allows us to estimate them, and consequently to compute the estimators of the population parameters. The results of a small numeric study indicate that the performance of the proposed estimators is acceptable.

Description: To overcome the traditional drawbacks of chain sampling methods, the sampling method called “network sampling with memory” was developed. Its unique feature is to recreate, gradually in the field, a frame for the target population composed of individuals identified by respondents and to randomly draw future respondents from this frame, thereby minimizing selection bias. Tested for the first time in France between September 2020 and June 2021, for a survey among Chinese immigrants in Île-de-France (ChIPRe), this presentation describes the difficulties encountered during collection—sometimes contextual, due to the pandemic, but mostly inherent to the method.

Description: The Longitudinal Social Data Development Program (LSDDP) is a social data integration approach aimed at providing longitudinal analytical opportunities without imposing additional burden on respondents. The LSDDP uses a multitude of signals from different data sources for the same individual, which helps to better understand their interactions and track changes over time. This article looks at how the ethnicity status of people in Canada can be estimated at the most detailed disaggregated level possible using the results from a variety of business rules applied to linked data and to the LSDDP denominator. It will then show how improvements were obtained using machine learning methods, such as decision trees and random forest techniques.

Description: The purpose of this article is to compare the linkage results for individuals from French tax sources with those of the 2019 Enquête Annuelle de Recensement (EAR), obtained through different methods. Such a comparison will decide whether the Répertoires Statistiques d'Individus et de Logements (Résil) program should be equipped with a probabilistic matching tool for its administrative source identification and matching engine.

Description: The reconciliation of 2021 census dwellings with the new Statistical Building Register (SBgR) presented linkage challenges. The Census of Population collected information from various dwelling types. For a large proportion of the population, mailing addresses were at the centre: they were used for reaching out to people and collected as contact info. In parallel, the register environment has been evolving. The agency is transitioning from the Address Register (AR) to the SBgR holding both mailing and location addresses, while also covering non-residential buildings. The reconciliation was conducted using a combination of systems, notably the new Register Matching Engine (RME) for difficult cases. The RME holds an interesting range of sophisticated string comparators. A deterministic linkage approach was used, while incorporating some data knowledge like the entropy. Through metadata, the matching expert could also reduce the amounts of false positives and false negatives.

Description: Using data from the 2021 Census of Population, this article examines the prevalence of low income among persons in one-parent families with an immigrant parent. This article explores the prevalence of low income according to characteristics of the parent (e.g., admission category, period of immigration) and their family and household (e.g., number of children, household type).

Description: As the importance of subjective well-being to health continues to garner increasing attention from researchers and policy makers, community belonging has emerged as a potential population health target that has been linked to several self-rated measures of health and well-being in Canada. This study assessed novel area-level community belonging measures derived using small area estimation and examined associations with individual-level measures of community belonging and self-rated health.

Description: The Aboriginal Peoples Survey (APS) is a national survey on the social and economic conditions of First Nations people living off reserve, Métis and Inuit. The objectives of the APS are to identify the needs of these Aboriginal groups and to inform policy and programs aimed at improving the well-being of Aboriginal peoples. The APS aims to provide current and relevant data for a variety of stakeholders, including Aboriginal organizations, communities, service providers, researchers, governments, and the general public.

The 2012 APS represents the fourth cycle of the survey and focuses on issues of education, employment and health of First Nations people living off reserve, Métis and Inuit aged 6 years and over.

The 2017 APS represents the fifth cycle of the survey and focuses on participation in the Canadian economy, transferable skills, practical training, use of information technology and Aboriginal language attainment of First Nations people living off reserve, Métis and Inuit aged 15 years and over.

Description:

The Geography working paper series is intended to stimulate discussion on a variety of topics covering conceptual, methodological or technical work to support the development and dissemination of the division's data, products and services. Readers of the series are encouraged to contact the Geography Division with comments and suggestions.

Description:

As Statistics Canada celebrates a significant milestone in 2018, it is time to take a look back at our history to see where we have been and what we have done over the past century. At the same time, it is a chance to reflect on where the agency is headed in the future. This series of articles shows how our work has evolved since 1918: where we started, how we have evolved and what we do now.

Description:

This series of analytical reports provides an overview of the Canadian labour market experiences of immigrants to Canada, based on data from the Labour Force Survey. These reports examine the labour force characteristics of immigrants, by reporting on employment and unemployment at the Canada level, for the provinces and large metropolitan areas. They also provide more detailed analysis by region of birth, as well as in-depth analysis of other specific aspects of the immigrant labour market.

Description:

Historical works allow readers to peer into the past, not only to satisfy our curiosity about “the way things were,” but also to see how far we’ve come, and to learn from the past. For Statistics Canada, such works are also opportunities to commemorate the agency’s contributions to Canada and its people, and serve as a reminder that an institution such as this continues to evolve each and every day.

On the occasion of Statistics Canada’s 100th anniversary in 2018, Standing on the shoulders of giants: History of Statistics Canada: 1970 to 2008, builds on the work of two significant publications on the history of the agency, picking up the story in 1970 and carrying it through the next 36 years, until 2008. To that end, when enough time has passed to allow for sufficient objectivity, it will again be time to document the agency’s next chapter as it continues to tell Canada’s story in numbers.

Description: This publication presents an overview of recent economic developments in the provinces and territories. The overview covers several broad areas: 1) gross domestic product (GDP) by income and by expenditure, 2) GDP by industry, 3) labour productivity and other related variables.

The publication examines trends in the major aggregates that comprise GDP, both income- and expenditure-based, as well as prices and the financing of economic activity by institutional sector. GDP is also examined by industry. The productivity estimates are meant to assist in the analysis of the short-run relationship among the fluctuations of output, employment, compensation and hours worked. Some issues also contain more technical articles, explaining national accounts methodology or analysing a particular aspect of the economy.

This publication carries the detailed analyses, charts and statistical tables that, prior to its first issue, were released in The Daily (11-001-XIE) under the headings Provincial Economic Accounts and Provincial Gross Domestic Product by industry.

Description:

Understanding the role of women in Canadian society and how it has changed over time is dependent on having information that can begin to shed light on the diverse circumstances and experiences of women. Women in Canada provides an unparalleled compilation of data related to women's family status, education, employment, economic well-being, unpaid work, health, and more.

Women in Canada allows readers to better understand the experience of women compared to that of men. Recognizing that women are not a homogenous group and that experiences differ not only across gender but also within gender groups, Women in Canada includes chapters on immigrant women, women in a visible minority, Aboriginal women, senior women, and women with participation and activity limitations.

Description:

The publication provides data users, health professionals and individual Canadians with geometric means and selected percentiles of blood and urine concentrations of selected environmental chemicals for the Canadian population by sex and age group. The results presented in this publication were collected during cycle 4 of the Canadian Health Measures Survey from January 2014 to December 2015.

Description: In 2018, Statistics Canada will celebrate its 100th anniversary. As we count down to this important milestone, we would like to use our data to highlight some of the sweeping changes that have had a lasting impact on Canadian society and economy.

Description:

The Record Linkage Project Process Model (RLPPM) was developed by Statistics Canada to identify the processes and activities involved in record linkage. The RLPPM applies to linkage projects conducted at the individual and enterprise level using diverse data sources to create new data sources to meet analytical and operational needs.