Let's suppose I do a regression between earnings and age (and suppose I do not know the distribution of earnings). Would it be possible for the residuals to be normally distributed?

Brodie Beck

Brodie Beck

Answered question

2022-09-07

Let's suppose a regression between earnings and age (and suppose I do not know the distribution of earnings). Would it be possible for the residuals to be normally distributed?
I am thinking it would not be possible since earnings only takes on positive values and since the support of the normal is from to , it would not be normal. However, since residuals are errors, they can be both positive and negative, so I am starting to question my hypothesis here.

Answer & Explanation

Tanya Anthony

Tanya Anthony

Beginner2022-09-08Added 5 answers

If earnings are always positive then no, the residuals cannot be normally distributed, even though many may be negative: the magnitude of the negative residuals are bounded by the highest predicted earnings on the regression line.
That may not be the major issue: more important might be issues such as the skewness of earnings distributions at any age, or a non-linear relationship between earnings and age .
Isaac Barry

Isaac Barry

Beginner2022-09-09Added 1 answers

You can always skew-zero transform a y-variable (earnings) if transforming skewed x-variables do not result in normally-distributed residuals. van Der Waerden scores would do a good job here, so to begin:
1. Determine percentile values, p c t i , of each y-value based on rank position, R ( y i ), after an ascending sort.
2. Obtain the van der Waerden scores by plugging in the percentile values into the inverse CDF, i.e., Z i = Φ 1 ( p c t i )
3. Then regress Z on age, providing age is not skewed too much.
By definition, van der Waerden scores are mean-zero standard normal distributed, N ( 0 , 1 ), so the residuals should now be normally distributed.
To interpret the coefficient on age, just deconvolve.

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