Commemorating the 50th anniversary of
the National Longitudinal Surveys
Current member of the NLS Technical Review Committee
NLS user since 1995
The NLS data sets are simply the best available to examine the interrelationship between family and work life. In particular, these data have detailed information on marriage, cohabitation, childbearing, and divorce -- important factors shaping labor supply. Detailed work histories, including occupation codes, have been very helpful to our research investigating how work shapes transitions into marriage. The large probability samples of multiple cohorts followed longitudinally make this a resource incomparable to any other for examining how macro-level economic and cultural shifts relate to the interplay between family and work life at the micro-level.