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Monday, Oct 13 |
A Panel Study of Income Dynamics:
1968-1980 Retrospective Occupation-Industry
Files Documentation
(Release 1)
Conducted with grants from the National Institute on Aging and the
National Science Foundation.
Survey Research Center
Institute for Social Research
The University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
1999
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Section I: Overview
1968-1980 Retrospective Occupation-Industry Files
Persons For Whom the Data are Available
Background for the Retrospective Occupation-Industry Files
How to Obtain the Files and Whom to Contact with Questions
Section II: Structure of the Files
Number of Records and Sort Order
Variables on the 1968-1980 Retrospective Occupation-Industry
Files
Section III: Reliability Rates and Cautionary Notes
Section IV: Linking Records
Using the 1968-1980 Retrospective Occupation-Industry Files
with Cross-Year Individual Files
Using the 1968-1980 Retrospective Occupation-Industry Files
with the Family Files
Section I: Overview
1968-1980 Retrospective Occupation-Industry Files
The set of 1968-1980 Retrospective Occupation-Industry Files is
comprised of thirteen family-level files, one for each wave,
containing three-digit 1970 Census occupation and industry codes
for selected PSID Heads and Wives.
The PSID used a one-digit occupation code, and later a two-digit,
until 1981 when the three-digit 1970 Census code became standard.
The complete history of PSID occupation and industry coding is
described in fuller detail below.
Records on these files are short and contain only the relevant
identifier for each year's family. In addition to the identifiers,
each file has two sets of variables, one pair of three-digit
occupation and industry variables for the current Head and a second
for the current Wife.
The 1968-1980 Retrospective Occupation-Industry Files are designed
to be linked to the relevant 1968 through 1980 Family Files, and
family identifiers are compatible with those datasets.
Persons For Whom the Data are Available
The occupations and industries were recoded from original reports
for Heads and Wives who met the following criteria:
a) Original sample Heads and Wives/"Wives still living by
1992 who reported main jobs in at least three waves
during the period 1968-1992, with at least one of those
reports prior to 1980.
b) Additionally, original sample Heads and Wives/"Wives" who
had reported at least one main job between 1968 and 1980
but were known to have died by 1992.
The selection criteria did not include all Heads and Wives/"Wives"
who had worked between 1968 and 1980. Those who were still living
but had reported only one or two jobs during the period of interest
were excluded, as were all nonsample Heads and Wives/"Wives".
Therefore not every Head or Wife/"Wife" has data on these files.
Background for the Retrospective Occupation-Industry Files
The 1968-1980 Retrospective Occupation-Industry Files originated as
part of the Working Lives and Mortality in an Aging National Cohort
project, funded by the National Institute on Aging and with
Benjamin Amick of The Health Institute at the New England Medical
Center and David R. Williams of the Survey Research Center here at
ISR. This project required three-digit occupation and industry
codes throughout the course of the PSID.
Between 1968 and 1980, the PSID had coded occupations and
industries using various combinations of one- and two-digit codes.
Occupations were coded using the one-digit code from 1968 through
1975. Classic industry questions ("What kind of business or
industry is that?") were not asked until 1971, when a two-digit
industry code was utilized. Two-digit occupations were coded from
1976 through 1980, and in one wave, 1974, the three-digit Census
code was used along with the one-digit.
The table below shows what was coded in which years for whom,
depending on employment status and whether the person was a Head or
a Wife.
NUMBER OF NUMBER OF
YEAR AND QUESTION DIGITS FOR DIGITS FOR
EMPLOYMENT STATUS REFERENCE OCCUPATION INDUSTRY
1968 1 Not coded
Head Employed F2-F3
Head Unemployed G1*
Head Out of Labor
Force H2*
Wife I10*
1969 1 Not coded
Head Employed D1-D2
Head Unemployed **
Head Out of Labor
Force F2*
Wife G3*
1970 1 Not coded
Head Employed D2-D3
Head Unemployed E6*
Head Out of Labor
Force F3*
Wife G3*
1971 1 2
Head Employed D2-D3,D3a
Head Unemployed E6,E6a*
Head Out of Labor
Force F3,F3a*
Wife G3,G3a*
1972 1 2
Head Employed D2-D3,D3a
Head Unemployed E6,E6a*
Head Out of Labor
Force F3,F3a*
Wife G3,G3a*
1973 1 2
Head Employed D2-D3,D3a
Head Unemployed E6,E6a*
Head Out of Labor
Force F3,F3a*
Wife G3,G4*
1974 1 and 3 2
Head Employed D2-D3,D4
Head Unemployed E6,E7*
Head Out of Labor
Force F3,F4*
Wife G3,G4*
1975 1 2
Head Employed D2-D3,D4
Head Unemployed E6,E7*
Head Out of Labor
Force F3,F4*
Wife G3,G4*
1976 2 2
Head Employed D2-D3,D4
Head Unemployed E12,E13*
Head Out of Labor
Force F4,F5*
Wife G3,G4*
1977 2 2
Head Employed D2-D3,D4
Head Unemployed E15,E16*
Head Out of Labor
Force F6,F7*
Wife G6,G7*
1978 2 2
Head Employed D2-D3,D4
Head Unemployed E27,E28*
Head Out of Labor
Force F16,F17*
Wife G6,G7*
1979 2 2
Head Employed C6-C7,C8
Head Unemployed D13,D14*
Head Out of Labor
Force E4,E5*
Wife Employed F7-F8,F9
Wife Unemployed G6,G7*
Wife Out of Labor
Force H4,H5*
1980 2 2
Head Employed C6-C7,C8
Head Unemployed D12,D13*
Head Out of Labor
Force E4,E5*
Wife Employed F7-F8,F9
Wife Unemployed G6,G7*
Wife Out of Labor
Force H4,H5*
* This question asks what the Head or Wife did on his or her
last job or what his or her usual occupation was. This may or
may not have been during the prior calendar year. If the
prior year's work hours were zero, then this was precoded to
zero for the retroactive three-digit recoding.
** Occupation and industry questions were not asked for Heads in
this category in this wave.
The retrospective coding was begun in October, 1996 using a custom
SAS application. It necessitated accessing paper materials from
the PSID archives for the written descriptions of the jobs. To
save time and increase reliability, the coder coded all occupations
and industries for each person across all required years before
moving on to the next case. A table of the number of occupation-
industry pairs to be coded per person follows:
NUMBER OF NUMBER NUMBER
PAIRS PER OF OF PAIRS
PERSON PERSONS RECODED
1 628 628
2 553 1,106
3 667 2,001
4 661 2,644
5 643 3,215
6 573 3,438
7 570 3,990
8 515 4,120
9 470 4,230
10 431 4,310
11 473 5,203
12 436 5,232
13 2,166 28,158
TOTAL 8,786 68,275
How to Obtain the Files and Whom to Contact with Questions
The 1968-1980 Retrospective Occupation-Industry Files are available
through the internet. The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) or
loaction of the PSID home page is:
/
If you have questions that are not answered by this documentation,
you can contact PSID staff by e-mail:
psid_staff@isr.umich.edu
Section II: Structure of the File
The Retrospective Occupation-Industry Files are family-level files.
That is, data for Heads and Wives are included on the same records,
just like other PSID family files.
Numbers of Records and Sort Order
The 1968-1980 Retrospective Occupation-Industry Files contain
varying numbers of records, depending on the number of families
with either a Head or a Wife who met the criteria outlined above.
Hence, not every Head or Wife in a given wave was recoded on these
files. Below is a year-by-year summary of case counts:
ORIGINAL N TOTAL NUMBER NUMBER
FROM FAMILY CASES OF HEADS OF WIVES
YEAR FILE CODED RECODED RECODED
1968 4802 4802 3394 1193
1969 4460 3596 3378 1301
1970 4645 3870 3644 1408
1971 4840 3976 3670 1416
1972 5060 4070 3698 1415
1973 5285 4177 3737 1383
1974 5517 4345 3823 1445
1975 5725 4435 3869 1467
1976 5862 4485 3839 1526
1977 6007 4595 3903 1514
1978 6154 4712 3959 1551
1979 6373 4939 4059 1673
1980 6533 5148 4165 1768
Each file is sorted, in ascending order, by the yearly Interview
Number (e.g., for the 1968 file, ID68; for the 1969 file, ID69,
etc.).
Variables on the 1968-1980 Retrospective Occupation-Industry Files
The 1968-1980 Retrospective Occupation-Industry Files contain only
five variables per file. For detailed information on codes, refer
to the codebooks, but aside from the family identifier, two sets of
occupation and industry codes are included on each file. The first
set (e.g., on the 1968 file, HDIND68 and HDOCC68) are the three-
digit industry and occupation for the Head, if qualified under the
criteria described in Section I above, in that wave. The second
set (e.g., on the 1968 file, WFIND68 and WFOCC68) are the three-
digit industry and occupation for the Wife, if there was one and
she qualified for recoding, in that wave.
Section III: Reliability Rates and Cautionary Notes
Occupation and industry coding is a specialized coding task. The
coding work was done by SRC's Department of Survey Technologies,
and included check-coding at 5% overall with checking more heavily
concentrated on new coders and their initial cases. Because of
this use of check-coding as further training for new coders, the
error rate was 12.7%.
Another reliability test compared independent coding of the same 50
cases by five experienced coders. The 50 test cases were randomly
selected. Rates of difference for this phase were 92% for
occupation and 86.5% for industry.
As stressed above in Sections I and II, not every Head's or Wife's
occupation was recoded. The Head or Wife had to qualify under the
selection criteria--he or she had to be living as of 1992, an
original sample member, and had to report a minimum of three main
jobs between 1968 and 1992 with at least one report during the
1968-1980 period. All original sample members who were known to be
deceased as of 1992 and who had at least one report between 1968
and 1980 were also included.
Thus, nonsample Heads and Wives, those who had married into the
study, were completely excluded. Also excluded were those who had
never worked and those who were living in 1992 but had a total of
less than three reports since the beginning of the study.
Section IV: Linking Records
The Retrospective Occupation-Industry Files have an extremely
limited, albeit useful, amount of information, and the analyst will
want to access the much greater volume of data available for Heads
and Wives on the main Family and Individual Files. The main files
can provide substantial information for many individuals dating
back to 1968, when the PSID began. For others, though, the time
span of available data is more limited.
Using the 1968-1980 Retrospective Occupation-Industry Files with
the Cross-Year Individual Files
The 1968-1980 Retrospective Occupation-Industry Files can be linked
with any cross-year Individual File, since individual identifiers,
which can be corrected for subsequent releases of individual data
(although this is rare), are not included.
Data processing is required to link records between these two
files. To accomplish linkages, match on yearly family identifiers.
Note that, as with other family files, the Retrospective Files have
variables specific to both Heads and Wives on each record.
Matching to individual data must take account of the individual's
relationship to Head as surely as matching any family file with
individual data. Choose Head's occupation/industry variables for
an individual who is the current Head in the wave indicated;
similarly, select Wife's occupation/industry variables if the
person is Wife in that year.
MAIN RETROSPECTIVE
INDIVIDUAL OCCUPATION/
WAVE OF DATA FILE ID INDUSTRY FILE ID
1968 V30001 ID68
1969 V30020 ID69
1970 V30043 ID70
1971 V30067 ID71
1972 V30091 ID72
1973 V30117 ID73
1974 V30138 ID74
1975 V30160 ID75
1976 V30188 ID76
1977 V30217 ID77
1978 V30246 ID78
1979 V30283 ID79
1980 V30313 ID80
Note that not all Heads or Wives in a given wave have a match on
the corresponding Retrospective Occupation-Industry File. As
mentioned above, only certain Heads and Wives were eligible for
recoding.
Using the 1968-1980 Retrospective Occupation-Industry Files with
the Family Files
Merging information from the single-year Family Files is quite
simple. Match a Retrospective Occupation-Industry File with its
Family File using the yearly Interview (ID) Number. The table
below lists corresponding variables from each file.
MAIN RETROSPECTIVE
FAMILY OCCUPATION/
WAVE OF DATA FILE ID INDUSTRY FILE ID
1968 V3 ID68
1969 V442 ID69
1970 V1102 ID70
1971 V1802 ID71
1972 V2402 ID72
1973 V3002 ID73
1974 V3402 ID74
1975 V3802 ID75
1976 V4302 ID76
1977 V5202 ID77
1978 V5702 ID78
1979 V6302 ID79
1980 V6902 ID80
Again, we cannot mention too often that not every Head or Wife has
a match on the related Retrospective Occupation-Industry File.
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