Antecedents and predecessors of NLSY79: Paving the course

Monthly Labor Review

Volumn 128, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 8-14

  Walker, James R ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 28244478095     PISSN: 00981818     EISSN: 00981818     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (31)

1. "Parnes" data are named after one of the designers of the NLS, Herb Parnes, from Ohio State University.
2. Frank L. Mott, "Looking Backward: Post Hoc Reflections on Longitudinal Surveys," in Erin Phelps, Frank F. Furstenberg, and Anne Colby, eds., Looking at Lives: American Longitudinal Studies of the Twentieth Century (New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 2002). This offers another perspective on the history of the NLS program.
3. The Gluecks initiated a survey design that is difficult to match today. They interviewed the youth, their families, employers, school teachers, neighbors and justice officials. And they supplemented and validated the interview data with administrative data obtained from social welfare agencies. See Robert J. Sampson and John H. Laub, Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points Through Life (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 90.
4. See Paul Taubman and Terence Wales, "Higher Education, Mental Ability and Screening," Journal of Political Economy, 81 (Jan. -Feb., 1973) pp. 28-55, for a description of the NBER-Thorndike sample.
5. Europe initiated a number of early longitudinal studies as well. Erin Phelps and others, Looking at Lives: American Longitudinal Studies of the Twentieth Century (New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 2002), lists a few of the most noteworthy.
6. The Terman study of children with high ability followed a group of 672 high-ability children from California for more than 65 years, with an attrition rate of less than 10 percent of the original respondents (excluding those who died or became invalids)! See George E. Vaillant, "The Study of Adult Development," in Erin Phelps and others, eds., Looking at Lives: American Longitudinal Studies of the Twentieth Century (New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 2002), pp. 116-132.
7. See Janet Zollinger Giele, "Longitudinal Studies and Life Course Research: Innovation, Investigators, and Policy Ideas," in Erin Phelps and others, eds., Looking at Lives: American Longitudinal Studies of the Twentieth Century (New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 2002). Giele discusses the synthesis in developmental psychology, sociology, and history after World War II that led to a new conceptual framework for understanding the forces and behavioral processes as people age.
8. See Theodore W. Schultz, "Investment in Human Capital," American Economic Review, March 1961, pp. 1-17.
9. NLSY79 User's Guide (Columbus, OH, Center for Human Resource Research) p. 4.
10. Frank Stafford, "Forestalling the Demise of Empirical Economics: The Role of Microdata in Labor Economics Research," in Orley Ashenfelter and Richard Layard, eds., Handbook of Labor Economics, vol. 1 (New York, North Holland, 1986).
11. However, about 20 percent of these papers using a longitudinal data source, used the data as a cross section.
12. Joshua D. Angrist and Alan B. Krueger, "Empirical Strategies in Labor Economics," in Orley C. Ashenfelter and David Card, eds., Handbook of Labor Economics, vol. 3A (New York, North Holland, 1986).
13. With a small edge in papers to the original cohorts of the NLS! See for example, Stafford, "Forestalling the Demise of Empirical Economics," 1986.
14. One of the first codifications of panel data techniques appeared in a special volume in the Journal of Econometrics in 1982.
15. Also see Gary Chamberlain, "Panel Data," in Z. Griliches and M. D. Intriligator, eds., Handbook of Econometrics, vol. 2 (Amsterdam, North Holland, 1994). Chamberlain is considered a highly influential chapter on panel data.
16. Also see C. Hsiao, Analysis of Panel Data (Cambridge, MA, Cambridge University Press, 1986), a readable gem from the Econometric Society;
17. and Jeffrey Wooldridge, Econometric Analysis for Cross and Panel Data (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2002). Wooldridge's elegant text, provides a unified treatment of what is now an extensive literature.
18. Retention rates at the end of the first six interviews: Older Men 83 percent, Mature Women 88 percent, Young Men 76 percent, Young Women 86 percent. Please see the NLS Handbook or NLS User Guide for each Cohort for additional information.
19. Social Science Research Council, "A Research Agenda for the National Longitudinal Surveys of Labor Market Experience,"Parts i-IV. A Report on the Social Science Research Council's Conference on the National Longitudinal Surveys. Prepared for the Employment and Training Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor, October 1977 NBER volume.
20. See, for example, Richard B. Freeman and David A. Wise, eds., The Youth Labor Market Problems: Its Nature, Causes, and Consequences (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1982).
21. See Richard B. Freeman, "The Evolution of the American Labor Market 1948-1980," in Martin Feldstein, ed., The American Economy in Transition (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1980). As Freeman notes, "In the early part of the post-WWII period, most of the increase occurred among older women, many of whom were returning to work as their children reached school age. Nearly 80 percent of the growth in the female work force between 1947 and 1965 resulted from increased numbers of women aged 35 and over, whose labor force participation rate rose sharply."
22. Frank Mott, "Looking Backward: Post Hoc Reflections on Longitudinal Surveys," 2002, p. 67. Mott notes the strong policy motivation supporting the cohorts, but also recognizes the Mature Women's Cohort was "created in part because of internal pressures applied within the Department of Labor by individuals in the department's Women's Bureau."
23. James Sweet, remarks to a review of the NLS program by the Social Service Research Council in 1977. See William Bielby, Clifford Hawley, and David Bills, "Research Uses of the National Longitudinal Surveys," A Research Agenda for the National Longitudinal Surveys of Labor Market Experience, Part V. (Washington, DC, Social Science Reserach Council, Center for Coordination of Research on Social Indicators, 1978).
24. See Gary Chamberlain and Zvi Griliches "Unobservables with a Varianve-Components Structure: Ability, Schooling, and the Economic Success of Brothers," International Economic Review, 1975, vol. 16, pp. 422-50.
25. For a summary of its influence, see Kenneth I. Wolpin, "Educational data in the NLSY79: a premiere research tool," Monthly Labor Review, February 2005, pp. 15-20.
26. See David Ellwood, "Teenage Unemployment: Permanent Scars or Temporary Blemishes," in Richard B. Freeman and David A. Wise, eds., The Youth Labor Market Problem: Its Nature, Causes and Consequences (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1981);
27. and James J. Heckman, "Heterogeneity and State Dependence," in Sherwin Rosen, ed., Studies in Labor Markets (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1981).
28. See Bielby and others, "Research Uses of the National Longitudinal Surveys," 1978.
29. For a discussion of event histories and other methodological contributions of the NLSY79, see Randy Olsen, "The problem of respondent attrition: survey methodology is key," Monthly Labor Review, February 2005, pp. 63-67.
30. Social Science Research Council, A Research Agenda for the National Longitudinal Surveys of Labor Market Experience, 1977, p. 31.
31. James J. Heckman, Robert LaLonde, and Jeffrey Smith, "Something on Evaluation Literature," in David Card and Orley Ashenfelter, eds., Handbook of Labor Economics, vol. 3a (New York, North Holland, 1999), p. 1994.