Longitudinal and Life Course Studies 2012 Volume 3 Issue 2 Pp 268 - 284

ISSN 1757 - 9597

The Panel Study of Income Dynamics: overview, recent
innovations, and potential for life course research
Katherine A McGonagle

Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan
kmcgon@umich.edu

Robert F Schoeni

Institute for Social Research, Department of Economics and Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan

Narayan Sastry

Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan

Vicki A Freedman

Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan

Abstract

Spanning over four decades, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) is the world’s longestrunning household panel survey. The resulting data archive presents research opportunities forbreakthroughs in understanding the connections between economic status, health and wellbeing across generations and over the life course. The long panel, genealogical design, andbroad content of the data represent an unique opportunity for a multi-perspective study of life
course evolution and change within families over multiple generations. Based on relational
data structures and advanced web-based archiving and delivery tools, the PSID has a publicly
available web-based facility for users worldwide to create customized data extracts andcodebooks, based on nearly 70,000 variables from over 70,000 individuals over 44 years. This
paper provides an overview of the PSID and its supplemental studies, the Disability and Use ofTime Supplement, the Child Development Supplement, and the Transition into Adulthood study,
and describes features and recent enhancements that have increased the potential of thearchive for studying life course development.

Keywords: panel study, life course, data collection, human development, time use, young adulthood, aging
1. Introduction

drawn by the Census Bureau and interviews werecompleted with 30,000 of these households. Interestin continuing the study with the primary goal ofunderstanding the dynamics of economic well-being
led the OEO to approach the Survey Research Center(SRC) at the University of Michigan about continuing
to interview a sub-sample of low-income SEO
households.
Professor James N. Morgan, who
eventually became the study’s first director atMichigan, argued successfully for adding a crosssection of households from the SRC national samplingframe so that the study would also include non-poor

The world’s longest-running household panel
survey was originally created in the United States ofAmerica to assess President Lyndon Johnson’s ‘War
on Poverty’. In 1966 and 1967, the Office of Economic
Opportunity (OEO) directed the U.S. Bureau of the
Census to design and field the Survey of Economic
Opportunity (SEO) to provide data for a national
assessment of War on Poverty programs.
A
representative national sample of approximately
22,000 households and an over sample, in census
enumeration districts with large non-white
populations, of approximately 15,000 households was

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The Panel Study of Income Dynamics

2.1. Study design and following rules
The original aim of studying the dynamics ofincome and poverty led the 1968 sample to beformed from an oversample of 1,872 low income
families from the SEO and a nationally representative
sample of 2,930 households designed by the SRC.
Approximately 18,000 individuals lived in these
original families at that time, and are considered tohave the "PSID gene" making them eligible to befollowed for subsequent interviews. In addition, allindividuals born to or adopted by an individual with
the PSID gene acquire the gene themselves,
becoming PSID "sample persons" who are followed in
the study. As members of sample families grow up,
move out, and form their own economicallyindependent households, they are interviewed
separately, increasing the overall number ofinterviews conducted each wave. ii
This unique design of following children ofsample members as they themselves become adults,
replenishes the sample and helps to maintain its
national representation, as well as facilitating thestudy of outcomes across generations.
In 1990, 2,043 Latino households, including
families originally from Mexico, Puerto Rico, andCuba, were added to the study. While this sample
represented three major groups of immigrants, it did
not include all post-1968 immigrants. Because of thiscrucial shortcoming, and a lack of sufficient funding,the Latino sample was dropped after 1995.
In 1997, because of the escalation in costs driven
by the doubling of the sample size during its 30-year
history, PSID was forced to drop some families fromthe SEO oversample. At the same time, a sample of
511 families who had immigrated to the U.S. after
1968 was added, in order to maintain the national
representation of U.S. families in the study.iii Budget
constraints limited the size of the addition,
preventing it from being large enough to support theanalysis of immigrant subgroups. Because some ofthese families created split-off families, their overall
number increased to 638 by 2009.

households and hence represent the entire
population of the U.S. In addition, a fortuitousdecision was made to follow family members who
moved out of study households, such as children whocame of age during the study. This allowed thesample to remain representative of the nation’sfamilies and individuals over time. This study became
what is now called the Panel Study of Income
Dynamics (PSID; Hill, 1992). i
Launched in 1968, PSID will soon mark its 44th
anniversary. The data are a cornerstone of social science
research in the U.S.: more than 3,200 peer-reviewed
publications are based on the PSID, nine U.S. federal
agencies utilize the data in fulfilling their missions,annually nearly 25,000 data extracts are downloaded byover 2,500 different users world-wide, and there arenearly 5 million visits to the PSID website each year. As
an indicator of its significance, the study’s lead sponsor,
the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), named PSID
as one of the 60 most important innovations that NSF
played a key role in creating.
Starting in the late 1990s, several developments
increased the potential of the PSID archive forstudying life course development. Most notably,
content was expanded in the areas of health, wealth,expenditures, philanthropy, child development, thetransition to adulthood, and time use. This paper
provides a detailed profile of PSID and recent
supplemental studies, highlighting the features thatenhance the value for longitudinal and life course
research. The sections below describe the design andcontent of the PSID main interview, the Disability andUse of Time Supplement, the Child Development
Supplement, and the Transition into Adulthood study,
the distribution of data and documentation, funding
and administration, the analytic potential for life
course research, including research examples
designed to stimulate new ideas and discoveries, andwhat the future holds for PSID.

2. The PSID Main Interview

The primary source of information on PSID sample
members has been a survey conducted annually
through 1997 and biennially thereafter. This survey,
called the "main interview," is described in this section.
Subsequent sections describe supplemental datacollections on PSID sample members.

2.2. Respondents and sample sizes
The definitions and terminology used to describe
the PSID sample were adopted from the Census Bureau
in 1968 and, although dated, are maintained forconsistency and for their straightforward following

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The Panel Study of Income Dynamics

interviewed family unit or temporarily away in an
institution (e.g. college, jail, hospital, or the military).
Family members are individuals who are related to the
Head/Wife by blood, marriage, or adoption, although
unrelated individuals are included if they arepermanently living together and share income andexpenses.
Table 1 shows that in 2009 the PSID sample wascomprised of 8,690 family units consisting of 13,410
Heads/Wives and 23,102 individual family members(including Heads/Wives). There are substantial
sample sizes of individuals at all ages: 7,511 at ages 018, 7,396 at ages 19-39, 5,678 at ages 40-59, and2,517 aged 60 and older. In 2009, 13,041 individuals
with the PSID gene had been part of the interviewed
sample for at least five waves; 5,876 had survived andparticipated in every wave since 1968, providing large
samples of individuals who have been observed overa substantial portion of their life course.

rules. A single primary adult serves as the respondent. In
a married-couple family, the Head is defined as thehusband—unless he is physically or mentally incapableof being interviewed. The Head can also be a single
female. The term Wife is used for a female in a married
couple and “Wife” is used for a cohabitating female(henceforth, the former term is used for both marriedand cohabiting female partners). PSID attempts tointerview the same family member in each wave tomaximize consistency over time; approximately 95% offamilies that appear in successive waves have the same
respondent for both interviews.
PSID respondents provide information about
themselves, their spouse/partner, and all other family
members living together, who are referred to as the"family unit." Individuals who are not Heads or Wives
are classified as “other family unit members” if, at thetime of interview, they are members of the
respondents’ family and either residing in the

Table 1. Numbers of PSID individuals and Heads/Wives in 2009 by age group
Individuals1
Age Group
0-18
19-39
40-49
50-59
60-69
70 +
All ages
1

N

Heads/Wives
%
32.5
32.0
12.5
12.1
6.1
4.8
100.0

7511
7396
2891
2787
1397
1120
23102

N
28
5700
2744
2621
1287
1030
13410

%
0.2
42.5
20.4
19.6
9.6
7.7
100.0

Includes individuals currently residing in family unit

2.3. Response rates
The PSID has consistently achieved response rates
equal to or higher than other panel surveys worldwide (Schoeni et al forthcoming). Response rates arecalculated for each of the "sample types" within PSID.
The sample is defined across two different strata:
first, whether it is considered "core" versus"immigrant refresher", and second, whether in theprevious wave, the sample type is "re-interview"
versus "split-off" versus "re-contact." In regards tothe first strata, the "core" sample consists of all
families except those added in the 1997 immigrantrefresher sample. In regards to the second strata, the“re-interview sample” includes families who weresuccessfully interviewed in the previous wave. “Splitoff” families consist of individuals who left a PSID
family unit and established their own economicallyindependent unit. Finally, the “re-contact” sample
consists of families who did not respond in theprevious wave, but were respondents in the wave
before the previous wave. PSID attempts to recontact and interview these families in subsequent
waves, as a way to minimize attrition and maintainthe representativeness of the sample.

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The Panel Study of Income Dynamics

Table 2. Response rate each wave by sample type and interview type: 1968 to present
Core
ReSplit- Re-contact
Year Total interview Re-contact off
split-off Total
76.0
1968
60.4
81.4
1969 81.4 89.0
84.0
95.7
1970 95.7 97.0
86.0
96.5
1971 96.5 97.0
97.8
98.5
88.0
97.8
1972
88.9
97.8
1973 97.8 98.5
92.5
97.6
1974 97.6 98.0
88.6
97.8
1975 97.8 98.4
97.0
98.0
87.0
97.0
1976
90.3
97.6
1977 97.6 98.0
90.0
98.0
1978 98.0 98.3
86.5
97.5
1979 97.5 98.2
90.0
97.6
1980 97.6 98.0
85.7
97.7
1981 97.7 98.3
86.0
98.0
1982 98.0 98.8
98.0
98.3
88.3
98.0
1983
92.4
97.7
1984 97.7 98.0
92.0
97.3
1985 97.3 97.7
89.5
97.1
1986 97.1 97.4
97.2
97.8
82.9
97.2
1987
87.2
97.6
1988 97.6 98.0
83.3
97.4
1989 97.4 97.9
89.2
98.0
1990 91.7 98.3
96.1
98.2
86.1
97.8
1991
85.7
97.6
1992 96.0 98.0
52.1
67.9
47.4
94.7
1993 92.2 95.5
95.9
1994 nana
na
na
na
1995 na
97.0
na
na
na
na
1996 na
97.6
na
na
na
na
95.7
1997 na
na
na
na
na
90.7
96.0
54.6
82.3
50.0
93.1
1999
52.0
79.7
0.0
93.0
2001 91.7 96.7
57.6
79.6
42.9
93.4
2003 92.7 96.6
58.2
81.4
42.9
94.6
2005 93.9 97.4
2007 93.2 96.4
46.3
85.5
71.4
93.9
2009 94.3 97.0
53.5
88.7
53.8
94.7
Notes. na=not available

271

Latino (1990-95)/ Immigrant (1997-present)
ReSplit- Re-contact
interview Re-contact off
split-off Total

92.3
92.6
87.7
na
na

82.8
88.5
93.9
93.1
92.3
95.5

na
na
na

32.9
31.1
48.9
38.5
31.7
44.4

64.7
66.7
54.5
na
na

65.5
61.4
58.1
67.7
73.7
84.6

na
na
na

74.8
90.2
90.4
84.5
na
na

0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
66.7
0.0

na
66.4
76.4
83.9
85.4
85.1
89.8

Katherine A McGonagle, Robert F Schoeni, Narayan Sastry, Vicki A Freedman

The Panel Study of Income Dynamics

providing updated contact information between waves
reduces field effort and costs (McGonagle et al 2011a,b; McGonagle et al 2009).

Table 2 presents response rates for each wave
from 1968 to 2009. The core re-interview sample
accounts for roughly 85% of the entire sample inrecent waves and has a wave-to-wave response rate inalmost all waves of 95-98%. The core split-off sample
experiences response rates typically in the mid-80%
range. The core re-contact sample has response rates
in the 50% range in recent waves, and the core recontact split-off sample is small with variable response
rates (e.g. 71% in 2007, 54% in 2009). The response
rates for the 1997 immigrant refresher sample areslightly lower than for the core sample; in 2009 theresponse rates were 96% for the immigrant reinterview sample, 85% for the immigrant split-off
sample, and 44% for the immigrant re-contact sample.

2.5. Sample representativenessDespite consistently high response rates, there isevidence that lower income families have higher
cumulative attrition (e.g. Fitzgerald et al 1998;
Fitzgerald 2011). However, parameter estimates ofinterest have not been found to be biased. In a recent
analysis of the effects of cumulative attrition in PSID up
to 2007, Fitzgerald (2011) finds little-to-no evidence ofbiased estimates of sibling correlations, or ofparameters, in inter-generational models of healthoutcomes. The close alignment of weighted estimatesfrom PSID with those from other U.S. benchmark
studies – the March Current Population Survey forincome (Gouskova et al 2010), the Survey of Consumer
Finances for wealth (Bosworth and Anders 2008), theNational Health Interview Survey for health status andhealth behaviors (Andreski et al 2009), the Consumer
Expenditures Survey for expenditures (Li et al 2010),
and the American Time Use Survey for time use
behaviors (Cornman et al 2011)—support the claimthat PSID remains representative of the U.S.
population. In other words, cumulative effects ofmodest wave-to-wave attrition do not appear to havebiased the PSID’s cross-sectional representation of key
economic or health factors.
Although families
comprised entirely of post-1997 immigrants are notpart of the sampling frame, this group is a small
segment of the U.S. population and over time joins the
PSID sample through intermarriage. Nonetheless, theaddition of a post-1997 immigrant refresher sample
remains a high priority for the project’s strategic plan.
Item non-response is also low, with very few
questions missing responses for more than 3-4% ofcases (Killewald et al 2011). Sample weights areprovided for each wave to account for differential
probabilities of selection due to the original sample
design and subsequent attrition, including longitudinal
individual weights, longitudinal family weights, andcross-sectional individual weights. Information about
the construction of these weights and their analytic
use is provided in companion documents on the PSID
website.
http://psidonline.isr.umich.edu/Guide/documents.aspx

2.4. Data collection and panel maintenance
The Survey Research Operations group at theInstitute for Social Research has fielded every wave of
PSID. Interviews were conducted annually between
1968 and 1997 and biennially thereafter through to themost recent wave in 2011. Since 1973 the majority ofinterviews in each wave have been conducted via
telephone and a computer-assisted telephonecollection technology has been used since 1993 (seeCouper and Nicholls 1998).
Although most cross-sectional surveys haveexperienced major declines in response rates over the
past several years (de Leeuw and de Heer 2002; Curtin
et al 2005; Card et al 2010), response rates in the mostrecently completed wave were as high as any in theentire history of the PSID. These high rates are
attributable to a number of factors, including:incentive payments that translate into roughly $1 per
average minute of the interview, that are mailed torespondents within a few days of the interview; anadditional small incentive for completion of theinterview on a cell phone to compensate for use of
paid minutes; maintaining experienced interviewers
who are repeatedly matched with the same families;
tailored refusal conversion techniques; a respondent
newsletter highlighting the importance of the study;
inter-wave communications with respondents that
include a small incentive for providing updated contact
information (McGonagle et al 2011). PSID regularly
runs methodological experiments to further improve
response rates. Results from a recent experimentindicate that sending respondents a small incentive for272

Katherine A McGonagle, Robert F Schoeni, Narayan Sastry, Vicki A Freedman
2.6. Content domains
A central aim of the PSID since its inception has been
to collect and distribute detailed information on
income and family demographics in order to support
research on the dynamics of economic well-being.
With input from its Board of Overseers and thebroader scientific community, the Study has been
expanded over time to collect and distribute data inmany domains, to allow the study of topics of
emerging scientific and policy interest. Data havebeen collected on a wide array of social,demographic, economic, and health topics, whichhave in turn supported unique multidisciplinary

The Panel Study of Income Dynamics

research. In 2011, the 89 minute interview collected
data on: employment, earnings, income from all
sources, expenditures covering 95-100% of total
household spending (Charles et al 2004), housing,foreclosure and mortgage distress, geospatial data,
health status, health behaviors, adult and childhood
health conditions, health insurance, marriage andfertility, program participation, vehicle ownership,
wealth and pensions, debt, and philanthropy. As
Table 3 shows, many of these areas have been
included in the instrument since 1968. Thousands ofadditional variables in other domains have beencollected throughout the history of the PSID.

Table 3. Content of the PSID 2011 main interview
Economic content
Housing characteristics (foreclosure and mortgage distress), utilities
Employment
IncomeGovernment transfer program participation
Consumption expenditures
Wealth and active savings
Pensions
Philanthropic giving and volunteering
Housework and child care
Health content
Work and activity limitations
Health insurance
Smoking and alcohol
Workers’ compensation
Hospital and nursing care
Social security disability insurance
General health status
Exercise
Height and weight
Activities of daily living / Instrumental activities of daily living
Health conditions
Emotional distress
Overall life satisfaction
Health expenditures
General health status in childhood
Health conditions in childhood
Medication use

273Year firstcollected
1968 (2009)
1968
1968
1968
1984
1968
1976
2001
1968
1968
1968
1968
1977
1981
1984
1984
1986
1986
1992
1999
2001
2009
1999
1999
2007
2011

Katherine A McGonagle, Robert F Schoeni, Narayan Sastry, Vicki A Freedman

The Panel Study of Income Dynamics(Table 3 cont’d)Social and demographic content
Family composition and residential changes
DeathsMarital and birth histories
Education of head, wife, children, and parents of head and wife
Current and first occupation/industry of head, wife (occupation ofparents of head and wife)
Restricted data available under contract
Geospatial data (tract, block, county where grew up)
Vehicle model
Cause and date of death (National Center for Health Statistics)
Medicare claims (Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services)
Secondary school characteristics (National Center for Education
Statistics)
Housing subsidies (Department of Housing and Urban Development)

1968
1968
1968
1968
1968
1968
1999
1979
1991
1968
1968

avoid higher education, marriage and cohabitation,and childbearing. The estimation of causal effects ismade possible by the repeated measures on
respondents, the presence in the data of siblings,
cousins, and other related individuals, regionalvariation in the severity of the recession, and the longand rich historical record on individuals and families.
To maintain respondent confidentiality, some
PSID data are available only through restricted use
contract to users who follow an appropriate data
safeguarding plan, including geospatial identifiers anda variety of linked administrative records. Geospatial
identifiers, including Census tract, block-group, andblock, are available for the current residence at eachwave for all families since 1968. iv County-level dataon where PSID individuals and their parents grew up
are also available. Links to external administrative
data sources have been expanded in recent years,
with information now available under restricted use
contract on: date and cause of death from the
National Center for Health Statistics National Death
Index for decedents since 1979; health care claims for
1991-2008 from the Centers for Medicare andMedicaid Services; whether the family has received
housing subsidies from the Department of Housing
and Urban Development; and school characteristics
from the National Center for Education Statistics forprimary and secondary public and private schools
attended by sample members.

Two modules were recently added that present
special opportunities for life course research. Addedin 2007, the childhood health calendar was designed
to provide data on the reasons for the strong andpersistent relationship between health status andsocio-economic status and its evolution over the life
course. The module includes a series of retrospective
questions on whether and when Heads and Wives
experienced a set of health conditions during theirown childhood, including: asthma, diabetes,
respiratory
disorders,
speechimpairment,
depression, drug or alcohol problems, and otheremotional problems. The collection of these dataenhances the power of the PSID to examine theeffects of health on life course development, by
providing markers very early in the life span. Analysesof these data have demonstrated their validity (Smith
2009).
Starting in 2009, new questions were added
about mortgage distress, including foreclosure
activity, falling behind in payments, mortgage
modifications, and expectations about payment
difficulties in the coming year. These data can be used
to examine the medium-term effects of the recent
economic recession on a range of outcomes,
including family formation and dissolution,
childbearing,andeducational
attainment.
Researchers can examine, for instance, whether
higher unemployment rates and declines in income
and wealth have led young adults to postpone or274Katherine A McGonagle, Robert F Schoeni, Narayan Sastry, Vicki A Freedman

3. Disability and Use of Time Supplement(DUST)The Panel Study of Income Dynamics

In 2005, in recognition that the years from 18-24
are critical for life span development, the PSID began
a new study designed to follow the children from CDS
who had turned age 18 and had completed or left
high school and had families still active in PSID, called
the Transition into Adulthood (TA) study. The
primary scientific aim of TA is to understand thecauses and consequences of social, economic, andhealth transitions of young adults. Information iscollected about educational pursuits, employment,
occupational choices, education and career
expectations, family responsibilities, skills andabilities, intimate relationships, and more. Along withdata collected during the CDS, detailed information isavailable about development from early and middle
childhood through adolescence and into adulthood;
additional information will be collected on this cohort
over its life course as these youth transition toeconomic independence and become PSID Heads andWives. TA data have been collected biennially for
2005-2011 and will be collected through 2015 atwhich time all children from CDS will have been
observed at least once in the study. The response rate
for TA was 92% in the most recent wave. The CDS-TAPSID archive is unique in the scientific research
opportunities it presents for inter-generational andlife course analysis. v

Fielded in 2009, the scientific aim of DUST was toproduce a rich and nationally focused data archive tosupport innovative research on disability, time use,
and well-being for older married couples (Freedman
and Cornman, 2011). A total of 755 PSID Heads andWives were each interviewed about two randomly
selected days - one weekday and one weekend day.
Information was obtained using time diaries about
what respondents did, where they were, who did theactivities with them, who else was there, how theyfelt, and (for household and care-related activities)
for whom the activity was performed. Detailed
information was obtained about health, functioning,well-being, and stylized time use/participation
measures. The inclusion of data from the main PSID
allows for analyses about how time use varies, as aconsequence of pre-existing health, disability, andeconomic status of the family, from both care givers’
and care recipients’ perspectives.
Linkages tosubsequent waves of PSID will allow analysis of theimplications of time use for a variety of future healthoutcomes. Plans are underway to collect a second
wave of DUST on all PSID individuals aged 60 andolder in 2013.

4. The Child Development Supplement (CDS)
and the Transition into Adulthood (TA)study

5. Data distribution and documentation

The majority of PSID data and documentation
have been freely and publicly available on theInternet since 1996 through the PSID Data Center(www.PSID.org). Information is currently available onnearly 70,000 variables, on nearly 70,000 individuals,
and for all waves of main PSID data and supplements.
Users can create customized data extracts from any
set of waves by searching or browsing for variables,
obtain customized codebooks specific to their data
extract, and can archive data extracts for shared andfuture use. Users “load” their data carts withvariables by wave. Variable descriptions, including
univariate statistics and names of the same variablein other waves, are viewed by clicking an “openbook” icon next to each variable. Users can edit theircart by removing or adding variables through a returnto the “data aisle.” Data carts may be saved, allowing
specific extracts to be shared with colleagues,

Beginning in 1997, the CDS collected information
on up to two randomly-selected 0-12 year oldchildren (N=3,563) and their caregivers in PSID
families.
The scientific aim was to provide
researchers with a comprehensive, nationally
representative(withchild-based
weights),prospective database of young children and theirfamilies, for studying the dynamic process of childdevelopment. The same children and their caregivers
were re-interviewed in 2002/2003 and again in
2007/2008 with a child-based response rate
exceeding 90% in the most recent wave. Topics
included: health, skills assessments, parenting styles,
time use, school resources and the learning
environment in the home, and socio-emotional
characteristics of children and their parents.

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The Panel Study of Income Dynamics

ensure the rights and welfare of its research
participants are protected.
The National Science Foundation has been thelead funder of PSID over the past several decades.
Recent support has also been received from thefollowing organizations: National Institute on Aging,
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute on Child
Health and Human Development, Economic ResearchService of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, theCenter on Philanthropy at Indiana University, theAssistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation of the
Department of Health and Human Services, and theDepartment of Housing and Urban Development. The
study has been housed at the Institute for Social
Research, University of Michigan, from its beginningin 1968 to the present and is directed by a team ofsocial scientists. Since 1982, a Board of Overseers has
fostered input from the national community ofscholars, researchers, and policymakers.

reviewers, and students. A range of file formats isavailable when the user is ready to “check out,”
including SAS, STATA, SPSS, dBase, Excel, and ASCII.
PSID developed an online cross-year variable
index that facilitates searching and browsing all
variables across the full archive from 1968 to themost recent wave, and for all waves of CDS and TA.
Organized by content domains, the index is
integrated with the Data Center so that users canview the codebook and add variables directly to theirdata cart from the index.
PSID has developed user tutorials covering avariety of topics. The most recent tutorial provides
instruction on creating parent-adult child pairs to
examine inter-generational transmission of wealth,health, and other outcomes. These tutorials havebeen positively received by the research communityand by teachers (Stafford and Chiteji 2004).
Finally, an application is available called theFamily Identification Mapping System (FIMS) that
automatically creates a customized file containing
identifiers for PSID respondents’ relatives (including
biologicalandadoptivechildren,parents,
grandparents, great-grandparents, and siblings). FIMS
greatly simplifies the process of creating genealogicalsamples by automatically generating a data extract
based on user input.

7. Research potential of the PSID for life
course research

The extended time series and consistently highresponse rates of the PSID provide substantial
analytic power to study antecedents andconsequences of a range of social, health, andeconomic factors. For older sample members inparticular, the history available is extraordinarily rich.
Since individuals are followed over the entire life
course, the number of waves that an individual
appears in the sample is related to their age.
However, individuals who were born into PSID
families also have substantial information on theirchildhood circumstances from their parents’ andgrandparents’ reports. This combination of
information on childhood circumstances and later
adult behavior and outcomes represents a major
analytical strength that supports a variety of different
analyses. Moreover, the analytical samples are large.
For instance, approximately 3,000 individuals in theoriginal cohort under age 18 in 1968 were ages 50 orolder by 2007 and are therefore represented in thedata for a full 40 years of their lives. This cohort, born
1950-1968, overlaps substantially with the 1946-1964
Baby Boom generation and is now reaching the ages
where life events such as acute health shocks, chronic
disease, and labor force transitions occur. For

6. Ethical approval, funding, andadministration

The majority of PSID data and documentation are
freely and publicly available on the Internet. Before
downloading public data, users must register with the
PSID and agree to conditions of use, which include
pledging to make no attempt to identify study
participants, and to report any identification of study
participants or data errors immediately to PSID.
Individuals wishing to obtain restricted data such as
geospatial identifiers must provide a data security
plan that meets PSID data safeguarding requirements,and have approval from their institution’s humansubjects review and/or privacy board (described here:
http://simba.isr.umich.edu/restricted/RestrictedUse.
aspx). The University of Michigan Health Sciences
and Behavioral Sciences Institutional Review Board
conducts annual reviews of the PSID data collection
and distribution protocols and survey instruments to276

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The Panel Study of Income Dynamics

Effects of the Great Recession on young adults
PSID and TA data provide an unprecedented
opportunity to examine how recent economic
adversity starting at the end of 2007 in the U.S., in
combination with secular changes in federal financial
and mortgage policies, have shaped schooling andemployment choices of young adults. Recent work
has shown that changes in a household's housing
wealth in the four years prior to a child being ofcollege-age affects the likelihood that the childattends college (Lovenheim 2010). Data from therecent PSID foreclosure and mortgage distressmodule can be used to study how exposure tofinancial adversity defines early labor force
participation and its link to later employment
opportunities and educational trajectories over thelife course. The choices and experiences in thesecohorts can be compared with those of young adults
who reached age 18 or 19 before the financial crisis.

children in the CDS and TA, a wealth of information
exists on their behavior, health, and development asthey passed through early, middle, and late childhood
and into adolescence and young adulthood, and,increasingly, as members of the main PSID. The
resulting data can be used to better understand how
early circumstances, such as childhood socioeconomic status, health, neighborhood and school
characteristics, and educational choices, shape healthand well-being over the life course.
The following of sample members who aredescendants of the original 1968 sample yields interand intra-generational samples, which are powerful
additions to the study of life course development.
The inter-generational sample is comprised of adultchildren who split off from their sample parents toform their own households and who are recruited
into the study. Intra-generational analyses havefocused on outcome comparisons among siblings, asa means to control for, or examine, unmeasured
family effects (e.g. Conley and Glauber 2007).
Relative-pairs that can be examined in the PSID
include dyads formed from parents and children,from siblings, and from grandparents andgrandchildren. There are hundreds, and in manycases thousands, of these pairs within the PSID; they
are typically observed for many years, leading to alarge number of relative-pair-year observations. In
2009 alone, PSID had 4,626 Heads/Wives who had aparent in the study, and 4,927 had a sibling in the
study who was also a Head or Wife in that year
(yielding about 2500 sibling pairs). Among Heads orWives aged 50 and older in 2009, 2,858 had an adultchild participate in the main intervew (many more
had children interviewed in CDS-TA), 1,285 had atleast one sibling interviewed, and 722 had a parent
interviewed. For many PSID families, self-reported
information is currently available on up to four
generations within the same family, at various points
in their life course.

Marital transitions
Studies using the PSID have examined trends inmarriage, cohabitation, divorce, and separation, andthe causes and consequences of marital transitions.
Studies have found that factors influencing maritaltransitions include risk preferences (Schmidt 2008),
education (Ono 2009), household bargaining (Cooke2006), child support (Chiappori and Weiss 2007), andjob loss (Charles and Stephens 2004). Studies haveadvanced scientific understanding of the impact ofmarriage, cohabitation, divorce, and separation on
numerous outcomes, including labor supply(Aughinbaugh 2010), expenditure patterns (DeLeireand Kalil 2005), child development (Page and Stevens
2005; Bjorklund et al 2007), assets and debt among
women (Fisher 2005), and bankruptcy filings (Fisher
2006). The data have been used to document the
weakening over the past three decades of marriage
and the nuclear family in the U.S. (Clark and Withers
2009; Seltzer et al 2005).
Fertility and birth outcomes
PSID is an important data source forunderstanding the causes and consequences of teen
childbearing, with recent work (e.g. Sullivan et al
2010; Wolfe et al 2007; Lopoo 2005) building on
numerous studies from the 1990s and early 2000s(Geronimus and Korenman 1992, 1993; Haveman et7.1. Illustrative research examples
This section provides a small sampling of ways thedata have been used for life course research, that
may generate new ideas and future scientificdiscovery. The PSID website provides a complete
bibliography of all studies using the data.

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The Panel Study of Income Dynamics

Mayer and Lopoo 2005; Solon 1992; Vartanian et al2007), and philanthropic behavior (Wilhelm 2008). In
fact, because of the length of the panel, PSID is now
being used to estimate changes over time in theintergenerational transmission of economic status(Lee and Solon 2009; Mayer and Lopoo 2008).
Researchers are also beginning to use the health datain conjunction with the socio-economic data to
examine the extent to which transmission of healthacross generations within the same family accounts
for the transmission of socio-economic status, andvice versa (Johnson and Schoeni 2009).

al 1997, 2001; Corcoran and Kunz 1997; Hoffman et al
1993; Foster et al 1998a, 1998b). Studies of thedeterminants of fertility among women of all ages
have examined the effects of child support (Plotnick
et al 2007), tax policy (Huang 2008), state-level
welfare programs (Ryan at el 2006), andneighborhood poverty (South and Crowder 2010).
The data have been used to examine the effects ofbirth outcomes and health in early childhood on
health and well-being in later life (Johnson andSchoeni 2009; Haas 2007; Smith 2009).
Effects of neighborhoods over time
The availability across the life course of PSID
individuals’ census tract of residence (and census
block beginning in 2009), through a restricted use
contract, permits the study of neighborhood effects
on development. A number of studies have used thedata to examine neighborhood effects on child,adolescent, and young adult development (Dearing et
al 2009; Jackson and Mare 2007; Timberlake 2009a,
2009b; Wimer et al 2008), health (Do and Finch 2008;
Halliday 2007; Halliday and Kimmitt 2008; Johnson
and Schoeni 2009), education (Brooks-Gunn et al
1993; Crowder and South 2003; Galster et al 2007;
Harding 2003), income and earnings (Sharkey 2008),
the inter-generational transmission of neighborhood
context (Dawkins 2005a; Sharkey 2008; Solon et al2000), and fertility behavior (Clark 2009; South andCrowder 2010; South 1999, 2001a, 2001b). Becauseof its oversample of African American families, thedata have been used to examine levels and trends in
racial equality in neighborhood economic status andmigration (Sharkey 2008; Dawkins 2005b, 2006;
Freeman 2005a, 2005b, 2008; South and Crowder,
2005; Timberlake 2007; White et al 2005; Vartanian
et al 2007; Crowder and South 2005).

Life course consumption, savings, and wealthaccumulation
The economic position of individuals nearing
retirement is heavily influenced by saving andconsumption decisions made during their working
years. The experience of the large Baby Boomgeneration – the leading edge of which turns age 65
in 2011 -- is particularly well-represented in the PSID.
Boomers were ages 4 to 22 years old when the PSID
began in 1968, and most were still living in theirparents’ home. Substantial data collected on savings
and wealth over several decades can be used toprovide insights into how the financial behaviors anddecision-making over the lifetimes of this generation
has shaped their economic well-being as they reachretirement age.
Comparative research over time and across countries
The design of the PSID offers both flexibility to
study emerging trends, and harmonization of key
content to facilitate cross-national comparisonsacross all age groups. Comparable panels whichfacilitate study of the interplay of social and economic
policies, health trajectories, and economic well-being
over the life course (Banks et al 2003, 2009; Bjorkland
et al 2007; Burkhauser et al 2005; Eberharter 2008)
include the UK Understanding Society study, theGerman Socio-Economic Panel Study, the Household,Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, andmany others. The Cross-National Equivalence File
Project at Cornell University has further facilitatedcomparative analysis, by aligning variables between
PSID and its companion surveys.

Socio-economic outcomes across and within
generations of the same family
Because PSID follows adult children as they form
their own households, it is uniquely positioned toinvestigate intergenerational effects. The data havebeen used to examine correlations across generationsin health (Davis et al 2008; Valerio et al 2009), socioeconomic status (Charles and Hurst 2003; Eberharter
2008; Gouskova et al 2010; Lee and Solon 2009;278

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8. The Future of PSIDThe Panel Study of Income Dynamics

links to birth records will be tested. An education
update will be collected from all family members,
yielding timely information about investments in
education over the life course. In 2014, PSID plans tocollect new data on psychological well-being,
providing an unique opportunity to study influencesof social and economic factors on well-being across all
age groups. Finally, two high priorities in the next few
years are the addition of a post-1997 immigrantsample refresher, and the implementation of a new
PSID Child Development Supplement, in order tocollect detailed information on the health,development, and well-being of all (nearly 7,000)
children under age 18, including biomeasures such as
DNA (Sastry et al 2009).

As of this writing, data collection of the 2011 maininterview has concluded and the data are being
processed for release in 2012. Plans are underway tocollect new information in 2013 that will respond to
emerging research questions and policy issues. For
example, in recognition of the role of the extended
family as an increasingly important source ofassistance over the life course (Bianchi et al 2008),
PSID will provide a more complete enumeration ofmembers of extended families and assess short-termtransfers of time and money and long-term, life-cycletransfers for education and housing. Moreover, toenhance information available describing the earliest
stage of life, additional data will be collected about
between-wave births, and a protocol for obtaining

Acknowledgements

Support for this work was provided by the National Science Foundation (SES 0518943), the National Institute on
Aging (P01-AG029409; R01-AG019802), and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health andHuman Development (R01HD052646; R01HD33474).

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Endnotesi

Detailed information about the study design, following rules, and wave-specific information may be found in
the PSID Main Interview User Manual on the PSID website:
http://psidonline.isr.umich.edu/data/Documentation/UserGuide2009.pdf.
ii
See Table 2 of the PSID User Manual for the number of original sample members who have been interviewed ineach wave and Table 3 which lists the number of sample members in each wave who have left the study, died,or were dropped from the sample: http://psidonline.isr.umich.edu/data/Documentation/UserGuide2009.pdf.
iii
See the PSID Technical Series Paper here for details on the immigrant sample addition
http://psidonline.isr.umich.edu/Publications/Papers/tsp/2000-04_Imm_Sample_Addition.pdf
iv
Starting with the 2007 wave, three levels of PSID geospatial data are available, in order of descending
precision: Census Tract, Block Group, and Census Block. Census Block is the smallest level of data made available
by PSID. Several Blocks make up Block Groups, which in turn make up Census Tracts.
v
For more information see the CDS and TA User Guides here:
http://psidonline.isr.umich.edu/Guide/documents.aspx284