YA Interim Letter

Y

ou are part of a study known around the world
by researchers and policy makers! The work the
National Longitudinal Surveys has accomplished
in fifty years stands as a model to researchers in the
U.S. and in other countries looking to create there own
longitudinal studies.
Since its inception in the 1960s, the NLS has gathered
information at multiple points in time on labor market
experiences and significant life events of seven cohorts
of men, women and children. While labor market
experiences have always been a core focus of the NLS,
the studies cover schooling, training, skills, income and assets, family formation, fertility, household formation, attitudes
and expectations, and much more.
For more information about the historical importance of the NLS read the recent comments from U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics Commissioner Erica L. Groshen as she talks about the importance of the National Longitudinal Surveys.

Recent NLSY Research Results

Spring 2016

Information gathered from the NLS is routinely used by researchers who
write papers on varying topics. The list below is just a sampling of some
of the pieces written in the last couple of years. For a complete list of
known articles using the NLS, visit the NLS Bibliography web site at
www.nlsbibliography.org.
Job Displacement among Single Mothers: Effects on Children’s
Outcomes in Young Adulthood
Jennie Brand and Juli Thomas
American Journal of Sociology 119,4 (January 2014): 955-1001

NLSY79
Young Adult

Update

Childhood Socialization and Political Attitudes: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
Andrew Healy and Neil Malhotra
Journal of Politics 75,4 (October 2013): 1023–1037
Violence in Early Life: A Canada-US Comparison
Lihui Zhang
Child Indicators Research 8,2 (June 2015): 299-346
Predictors of Latent Growth in Sexual Risk Taking in Late Adolescence and Early Adulthood
Kristin Moilanen
Journal of Sex Research 52,1 (2015): 83-97
An Evaluation of Fruit and Vegetable Consumption and Cigarette Smoking Among Youth
Jeffrey Haibach, Gregory Homish, Lorraine Collins, Christine Ambrosone, and Gary Giovino
Nicotine and Tobacco Research 17,6 (June 2015): 719-726
Low Birth-Weight and Risk for Major Depression: A Community-based Longitudinal Study
Stephen Levine
Don’t forget, participating
Psychiatry Research 215,3 (30 March 2014): 618-623

Visit the NLSY79 website at nlsy79.norc.org
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in the NLSY79 is another
great way for you to make
a positive impact on so
many people’s lives!

Please Complete the
Card at Left
Have You Moved?
Have You Changed Your Name?
Do You Have Feedback or Questions
for Us?
Please complete the postage-paid card
at left, marking any name, address, or
phone number corrections above the
mailing label. Then, drop the card
in the mail to the Center for Human
Resource Research (CHRR) at the Ohio
State University. Or you can go to the
NLSY79 website at nlsy79.norc.org to
make address changes.
CHRR and NORC at The University of
Chicago manage the survey and conduct
the interviews under a contract with the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, an agency of
the U.S. Department of Labor.

Learn
Why
the
NLS
Counts
As Explained by U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erica L. Groshen
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is best known for our monthly
job and inflation reports. We also publish data on many other
topics, ranging from how Americans spend their time and money to
workplace injuries and the growth of entrepreneurship.

recent generations, but we have learned so
much from all the surveys. These surveys
are some of the most analyzed in the social
sciences.

The National Longitudinal Surveys stand out because they are designed
to answer key long-term questions about people’s paths through life.
Most of our measures about the labor market and economy focus on
current conditions. What’s the national unemployment rate? How
rapidly is employment growing in California or North Dakota or
Georgia? How many job openings are there in manufacturing? What
are the trends in consumer prices for food, energy, clothing, and
shelter? It’s important to have up-to-date answers for these and other
economic questions. But some questions take longer to answer—years
or even decades.

Although we learn a lot each time we
update our monthly and quarterly data on
employment, compensation, prices, and
productivity, there is so much we could not
learn without these longitudinal surveys.

Some long-term questions we care about include: How many jobs do
people hold over their lifetimes? How do earnings grow at different
stages of workers’ careers? The surveys designed to answer these and
other long-term questions are called “longitudinal” surveys. What’s
that mean?
A longitudinal survey asks questions about the same people at different
points in their lives. Longitudinal surveys are useful for studying
changes that occur over long periods. These surveys are also useful for
examining cause-and-effect relationships. For example, how do events
that happened when a person was in high school affect labor market
success as an adult? This week we published a new report that looks at
the experiences of baby boomers from age 18 to age 48.
The NLSY79 follows a set of people born in the latter years of the
post-World War II baby boom, 1957 to 1964, and living in the United
States when the
survey began in 1979.
To answer my earlier
questions—using
just-released data—
these baby boomers
held an average of
11.7 jobs from age
18 to age 48. Their
inflation-adjusted
hourly earnings grew
the most during their
late teens and early
twenties, and earnings
generally grew faster
for college graduates than for people with less education.
The survey doesn’t just ask about labor market activity. It also asks
about education, training, health, marriages and other relationships,
children, use of government programs, juvenile crimes and arrests,
drug and alcohol use, and much
more. Why do we ask about
these topics, some of which are
pretty sensitive? In short, we’re
trying to understand all the
things that affect or are affected
by labor market activity. That
covers nearly every part of our
lives.
Before this survey of baby
boomers began in 1979, four
other longitudinal surveys
began in the 1960s of earlier
generations. BLS began another
survey in 1997 that represents
people born in the years 1980
to 1984 and living in the
United States at the start of the
survey. We only still conduct
the surveys of the two more

This is all possible thanks to former BLS
Commissioner Janet Norwood who passed
away recently—and to the people who have
agreed to participate in the surveys for so
long—so that we can understand people’s
paths over time!
Researchers in economics, sociology,
psychology, education, and health sciences
have used the surveys to examine a
broad range of topics. Here are just a few
examples of what researchers have learned
from the surveys:
• Nobel Prize winner James Heckman and
his colleagues found that noncognitive
skills, such as motivation and perseverance,
are as important to future labor market
success as are skills such as reading and
math.
• People who obtain a GED or other examcertified high school equivalent have labor
market outcomes that are similar to those of
high school dropouts, rather than to people
who earn a regular high school diploma.
• The labor market effects of a 4-year
college degree are similar for those who start
at a 4-year college and those who transfer
from a 2-year college to a 4-year college.
• Obesity is not only a health concern,
but a labor market concern. Workers pay
a price for obesity with lower wages and
employment, and this price is higher for
women than men.
• Low birth weight is a better predictor
than cognitive test scores of whether people
either work or attend school at ages 24 to
27. Birth weight also is a better predictor of
adult wages.