Respondent Rules and the Quality of Net Worth Data in the HRS

The HRS uses an informed selection procedure in choosing with spouse to ask about the household's assets and debts. This is more expensive than presumptive selection which has been commonly employed in past surveys. This paper evaluates the quality of the resulting net worth data in terms of the exactness of the reports. A trivariate ordered probit model is developed and estimated. This model controls for the self-selectivity of both the gender and proxy interview status of the net-worth respondent. The results suggest that the informed selection procedure does indeed result in lower item non-response and less reliance on approximation strategies than would a presumptive husband R1 respondent rule.