National Longitudinal Surveys

Multiple Respondent Households

At the time the original cohort samples were drawn, half of the mature women's cohort and a third of the older men as well as three-quarters of both the young men and young women cohorts shared a household with another cohort member. This allows for intergenerational studies such as income and time transfers, economic linkages among family members, and the examination of how family stability affects socioeconomic success. The sampling design used by the Census Bureau to select respondents for the four Original Cohorts often generated more than one respondent from the same household. More than half of the respondents from the Mature Women, Young Men, and Young Women cohorts and one-third of the respondents from the Older Men cohort shared the same household with at least one other respondent from another cohort at the time the samples were drawn. A given NLS household could include respondents from the same cohort (e.g., a young woman aged 14 to 24 living in the same household as another young woman aged 14 to 24) as well as respondents from two or more different cohorts (e.g., a man aged 45 to 59 living in the same household as a woman aged 30 to 44 and a young man aged 14 to 24). To facilitate use of this unique aspect of NLS data, variables are provided within each data set that link those respondents sharing the same household at the time of the initial screening.

The dominant types of relationships that existed among these household members (e.g., husband-wife, mother- daughter, father-son, sibling) are identified in a series of variables that were recently added to each data set. The Young Women data file contains, for example, the identification codes of mothers who were members of the Mature Women cohort in order that researchers can study the 1,848 mother-daughter pairs. Potential users should be aware that, although these respondent pairs represent unique samples for a number of research topics, they typically include demographically non-representative matches; for example, father-daughter matches from the Older Men and Young Women cohorts include fathers who were at least 45 years of age in 1966 and daughters who were no more than 24 in 1968. Attrition in general and more specifically mortality of one or more members have reduced the total number of pairs for whom data are available through the most recent survey date.

Number and Types of Dominant Pairs Identified During the Initial Survey Years: The Original Cohorts 


		            Young Women	  Young Men	Mature Women
Older Men Pairs
	Spouse Pairs	         —-	     —-    	    492
	Parent-Child Pairs	 988	     1098	    —-
Mature Women Pairs
	Parent-Child Pairs	1848	    1671	    —-
Young Men Pairs
	Spouse Pairs	         584	     —-    	    —-
	Sibling Pairs	        1814	     902  	    —-
Young Women Pairs
	Sibling Pairs	         949	     —-    	    —-
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Last Modified Date: March 01, 2002