This paper uses longitudinal data to estimate cohort changes in earnings trajectories. Among male workers turning 21 before 1980, we find that more than six in ten (60%) of all male workers and seven in ten (71%) of college-educated male workers attained earnings levels by age 30 that were at...

I begin with a brief history of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and its brilliant founding father, noting its nearly disastrous initial design, nearly fatal funding cutoffs when Nixon put the Office of Economic Opportunity out of business, and then when Reagan chopped the NSF social...

The 1996 welfare reform legislation stipulates a 60-month time limit on total receipt as well as work requirements after 24 months of receipt. Using Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data on the monthly patterns of AFDC receipt during the 1980s and early 1990s, we estimate the number and...

Drawing upon little-used data on the activities and attainments of fathers from the early waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), we assess how paternal characteristics affect the adult success of children raised in two-parent families. Consistent with other research is our finding...

A mother's initiation of welfare receipt is a key event for understanding the dynamics of welfare receipt and the likely consequences of welfare reform legislation passed in 1996. Using 28 years of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), we conduct a number of related analyses of...

This research uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) to describe and model developmental trajectories across middle childhood. Our sample consists of approximately 1,000 children of NLSY women who were age 6-7 in either 1986 or 1988. Assessments of PIAT math and reading...

The impact on success of motivation, risk aversion, social capital, and a host of other "noncognitive" characteristics is assessed using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Our intragenerational analysis uses a sample of men first observed in their 20s, and relates these traits...

Although it has long been known that parental socioeconomic status correlates strongly with various measures of child and adult achievement, the causal roleplayed by income remains controversial. Important unanswered questions include: 1) the role of the timing of economic deprivation during...