Reply to ‘‘Comment on ‘Statistical Based Earnings Estimates: Further Reflections and Extension’’’

Spizman (2021) comments on potential complications for practicing forensic economists who choose to ‘‘drill down’’ using micro data to estimate earnings, as done by Sicilian (2020), rather than use tables of summary statistics on earnings. This reply mainly addresses one concern raised—that using micro data to estimate age-earnings profiles cannot practicably be combined with estimates of probabilities of levels of educational attainment, as in Spizman and Kane (2020). As demonstrated here, using the Spizman and Kane method with micro data is no more difficult than when combining educational attainment probabilities with summary tables of earnings estimates.