Life Expectancy Study: It's Not Just What You Make, It's Where You Live

[muwarrior69]

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/11/473749157/its-not-just-what-you-make-its-where-you-live-says-study-on-life-expectancy

What got my attention was this:

Chetty and his co-authors collected more than 1.4 billion records from the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service to try to measure the relationship between income and life expectancy.

I thought those records are kept private.  How do we really know these researchers do not have our SS and IRS info? Now I guess they are on some server at Stanford for anyone to access.

[Badgerhater]

Can't speak to the IRS part of the study, but one's death is a public act and the SS death index is a public record.  Genealogists and historians have been using them for years.

[muwarrior69]

So anyone can get the SSN of a deceased person. I wonder how many of those are being used illegally?

[Tugg Speedman]

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/11/473749157/its-not-just-what-you-make-its-where-you-live-says-study-on-life-expectancy

What got my attention was this:

Chetty and his co-authors collected more than 1.4 billion records from the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service to try to measure the relationship between income and life expectancy.

I thought those records are kept private.  How do we really know these researchers do not have our SS and IRS info? Now I guess they are on some server at Stanford for anyone to access.

The IRS provides the data without names and SS# (they have other anonymous identifiers).  Emanuel Saez at Berkeley has IRS data on individual tax returns back to 1913.

http://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/SaezZucman2016QJE.pdf

[brandx]

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/11/473749157/its-not-just-what-you-make-its-where-you-live-says-study-on-life-expectancy

What got my attention was this:

Chetty and his co-authors collected more than 1.4 billion records from the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service to try to measure the relationship between income and life expectancy.

I thought those records are kept private.  How do we really know these researchers do not have our SS and IRS info? Now I guess they are on some server at Stanford for anyone to access.

Paranoia strikes deep