Nonresponse in surveys may result in a distortion of the distribution of
interest. In a panel survey the participation behavior in later waves is
different from the participation behavior at the start. With register data
that cover also the information for non-respondents one can observe a fade
away of the distributional differences between the distribution of the full
sample, including nonresponders, and the respondent sample, without the
nonrespondents. The mechanics of this effect may be explained by a Markov
chain model. Under suitable regularity conditions the distribution on the
state space converges to the steady state distribution of the chain, which is
independent from the starting distribution of the chain. Therefore the fade-
away effect is considered here as the swing-in into the steady state
distribution. An essential condition for the fade-away effect assumes the same
tran- sition law for the responders and the nonresponders. Such a hypothesis
is investigated here for the Finnish subsample of EU-SILC for the equival-
ized household net-income. The income is grouped into income brackets which
divides the starting sample into quintiles. This analysis is based on register
information. For this analysis the null-hypothesis of equal transition
behavior between income quintiles for responders and nonre- sponders cannot be
rejected. This finding restates a result for Finland for the ECHP (European
Community Household Panel). A second condition concerns the selectivity of
panel attrition after wave one. Here panel attrition must not depend on the
income state of the previous panel wave. The velocity of the swing-in into the
steady state distribution depends on the stability to stay in the same income
state. The stability may vary among the European countries. Therefore we
investigated the transition matrices for 25 EU-SILC countries. We simulated 6
different pattern of nonresponse bias and investigated the fade-away effect
across the waves 2006 to 2009. We found remarkable differences between these
25 coun- tries. Expressed by the relative bias, i.e. bias in 2009 divided by
bias at start in 2006, we found a reduction down to 26 percent of the initial
bias for Bulgaria (foremost reduction) up to 61 percent for Finland (least
reduction). Our results vote for longer observation periods in rotation panels
like EU-SILC