In the Forensic Economics (FE) industry, we gain new respect for the question, “what will happen today?” We often experience pleasant surprises or achieve unexpected results daily, but on May 3, 2023, we experienced loss. The John Ward Economics family, friends, and colleagues lost a special person who helped build the Forensic Economic industry, Dr. Kurt Krueger. Dr. Krueger spent 30+ years as a forensic economist and published some of the industry's leading and most cited work. These publications are provided through the publishing arm of John Ward Economics, LLC, called Expectancy Data.
As a living tribute to Dr. Krueger’s efforts and with continuing dedication to the FE industry, Dr. William Rogers has been working on updates to all of the Expectancy Data publications. Dr. Rogers has completed a thorough “due diligence” review of past DVD editions to ensure the updated publication is clear, concise, and reasonably reliable.
The Dollar Value of a Day (DVD) 2022 is now available at www.ExpectancyData.com for electronic download or, by special request, in a spiral-bound print edition.
Here are a few significant changes to the DVD to be aware of:
First, variance is no longer calculated by clustering the work week (e.g., a three-period week). Now, it is calculated for each day. The new method only changes the variance of the estimates. Dr. Krueger had calculated the between-variance of the work week, Saturday and Sunday. The 2022 DVD incorporates the full variance. The greater variance matches the American Time Use Survey (ATUS).
Second, the 2022 DVD calculates variance using the 160 ATUS's replication weights. This method is more accurate; it just takes much longer to calculate when preparing this document.
Third, the 2022 DVD drops the percent standard error and adds the 95% confidence interval. The standard confidence interval assumes symmetry, so a lower CI can be negative when the estimate is close to zero. That doesn't mean someone reported negative time; given the variance, the mean value is close to zero. We report “n/a” when the lower confidence interval is not greater than zero after rounding to the nearest one-hundredth of an hour.
Fourth, all hourly valuations are made by applying the BLS’ OEWS data to the weekly time allocation except for “Working at Job,” which is estimated directly using the self-reported usual weekly hours worked and usual weekly earnings. The 2022 DVD reports the median value of usual earnings per usual hours. We use median estimates because some tables have few observations. We report a zero hourly wage for all samples with less than 25 respondents with earnings and “n/a” for the confidence intervals.
The publication to receive the next update will be the Full Time Earning publication. We expect this to be available in Summer 2024.
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