Education data in the NLSY79: A premiere research tool

Monthly Labor Review

Volumn 128, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 15-20

  Wolp, Kenneth I ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA   (United States)

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EID: 28244477617     PISSN: 00981818     EISSN: 00981818     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (13)

1. Education alone yields 1,600 matches, schooling alone 588, with 385 matches using both. A search for the words "earnings" or "wages" yielded 1,437 matches, and for "income," 1,027 matches. All of these figures are somewhat overstatements because of duplications that arise when papers appeal' in multiple forms, for example, as a working paper and later as a journal publication.
2. When referring to the NLSY79, I include the Children of the NLSY79. Recall also that the NLS consists of five additional cohorts, four begun between 1966 and 1968, and the latest begun in 1997.
3. I thank Terry Fahey at the Center for Human Resource Research (CHRR) for performing the specialized search of the Bibliography's data-base on which these figures are based.
4. This is the only psychology journal publishing at least five such articles. There are about a dozen other psychology journals that have published fewer than five, though most have published only one article.
5. In the NLSY97, on the other hand, the schooling section contained several hundred questions in the first round. Schooling data in the 1997 survey are obtained as a dated event history similar to the employment data.
6. The Current Population Survey (CPS) counts both those with a GED and those with a regular diploma as a high school graduate.
7. The samples for the earnings and welfare statistics are both based on respondent-years in which there is no missing information either on earnings or on welfare benefits. In addition, the sample is restricted to those who had at least one report in each 5-year age interval.
8. As with earnings and welfare, the sample is restricted to those who have a valid report in at least 1 year of each 5-year age interval.
9. Financial assets consist of moneys in savings or checking accounts, money market funds, credit unions, U.S. savings bonds, individual retirement accounts, 401 K or pre-tax annuities, certificates of deposits, personal loans to others or mortgages held, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and rights to an estate or investment trust.
10. The sample is based on respondent-years in which there is no missing information on the health limitation question. The average numbers of years over the 25-39 age range in which these data are reported for each schooling category are: 10.3, 10.0, 10.5, 10.4, and 10.3 for males, and 10.9, 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, and 10.7 for females.
11. More specifically, the 1985 height report was used whenever available (about 90 percent of the cases). If that was missing, the 1982 height report was used, and if both were missing, the 1981 height report was used. Differences in reported height in the 3 years are small; mean reported height in 1981 is 17 inches less than in 1985 for those that report both. The BMI is defined as weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in meters. Obesity is defined as having a BMI of 30 or more.
12. Information was also collected on maternal behaviors during each pregnancy, such as prenatal care, smoking, drug use, and drinking.
13. Looking at first-born children avoids differences that might arise if birth weight is related to birth order, given that less educated women have more children as shown above. A similar comment applies to the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test scores addressed in the following section.