DOI: 10.3886/e194322v1
title: PSID-SHELF, 1968–2019: The PSID's Social, Health, and Economic Longitudinal File (PSID-SHELF), Beta Release

description: The <b>Panel Study of Income Dynamics–Social, Health, and Economic Longitudinal File (PSID-SHELF)</b> provides an easy-to-use and harmonized longitudinal file for the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), the longest-running nationally representative household panel survey in the world.<br><br>PSID-SHELF accentuates the PSID's strengths through <b>(1) i</b><b>ts household panel structure</b> that follows the same families over multiple decades; and <b>(2) i</b><b>ts multigenerational genealogical design</b> that follows the descendants of panel families that were originally sampled in 1968, with immigrant sample refreshers in 1997–1999 and 2017. Every individual who has ever been included in the PSID's main study is included in the PSID-SHELF data, with over 80,000 people observed, some of them across more than 40 survey waves (1968–present). The current version of PSID-SHELF includes 41 waves of survey data, ranging from 1968 to 2019.<br>The file contains measures on a wide range of substantive topics from the PSID's individual and family files, including variables on demographics, family structure, educational attainment, family income, individual earnings, employment status, occupation, housing, and wealth—as well as the essential administrative variables pertaining to key survey identifiers, panel status, sample weights, and household relationship identifiers. PSID-SHELF thus covers some of the most central variables in PSID that have been collected for many years. PSID-SHELF can easily be merged with other PSID data products to add other public-use variables by linking variables based on a survey participant’s individual and family IDs.<br>Despite a focus on longitudinally consistent measurement, many PSID variables change over waves, e.g., thanks to new code frames, topcodes, question splitting, or similar. PSID-SHELF provides harmonized measures to increase the ease of using PSID data, but by necessity this harmonization involves analytic decisions that users may or may not agree with. These decisions are described at a high level in the PSID-SHELF User Guide and Codebook, but only a close review of the Stata code used to construct variables in the data will fully reveal each analytic decision. The Stata code underlying PSID-SHELF is openly accessible not only to allow for such review but also to encourage users, as they become more comfortable with PSID, to use and alter the full code or selected code snippets for their own analytic purposes. PSID-SHELF is entirely based on publicly released data and therefore can be recreated by anyone who has registered for PSID data use.<br>Despite careful and multiple code reviews, it is possible that the code used to produce PSID-SHELF contains errors. The authors therefore encourage users to review the codes carefully, to report any mistakes and errors to us (<b>psidshelf.help@umich.edu</b>), and take no responsibility for any errors arising from the provided codes and files. <br><br><b>Current Version</b>PSID-SHELF, 1968–2019, Beta Release 2023.01<br><br><b>Recommended Citations<br></b>Please cite PSID-SHELF in any product that makes use of the data. Anyone who uses PSID-SHELF should cite the data or the PSID-SHELF User Guide and Codebook—and, as required by the PSID user agreement, the main PSID data.PSID-SHELF data:<br>Pfeffer, Fabian T., Davis Daumler, and Esther M. Friedman. PSID-SHELF, 1968–2019: The PSID’s Social, Health, and Economic Longitudinal File (PSID-SHELF), Beta Release. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], &lt;date last modified&gt;. &lt;Open ICPSR DOI&gt;.<br><br>PSID-SHELF User Guide and Codebook:<br>Daumler, Davis, Esther M. Friedman, and Fabian T. Pfeffer. 2023. PSID-SHELF User Guide and Codebook, 1968–2019, Beta Release. Data release &lt;release number&gt;. Ann Arbor, MI: Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. &lt;Open ICPSR DOI&gt;.<br><br>The main PSID data:<br>Panel Study of Income Dynamics, public-use dataset &lt;or "restricted-use data," if appropriate&gt;. Produced and distributed by the Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI: &lt;year of data retrieval&gt;.
description: The original PSID sample of roughly 18,000 people in 5,000 households consisted of a nationally representative sample and an oversample of low-income families. The oversample was included to facilitate investigations of poverty-related issues. PSID families are followed regardless of where they live. The sample grows naturally as children and grandchildren from these families form their own households and are invited to join the PSID. Samples of immigrants have been added to the PSID in 1997/1999 and 2017 so that the sample continues to closely resemble the national population.
description: Smallest Geographic Unit: state, region, country
description: computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI); computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI); face-to-face interview; telephone interview;