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The overall goal of the Baby's First Years study is to assess the causal role played by household income in affecting children's early cognitive, socio-emotional, and brain development. Recent advances in developmental neuroscience suggest that experiences early in life have profound and enduring impacts on the developing brain. Family economic resources shape the nature of many of these experiences, yet the extent to which they affect children's development is unknown. The Baby's First Years project is the first randomized controlled trial to provide estimates of the causal impacts of unconditional cash gifts on the cognitive, socio-emotional, and brain development of infants and young children in low-income U.S. families.

Specifically, 1,000 recruited mothers of infants with incomes below the federal poverty line from four diverse U.S. communities are receiving monthly cash gift payments by debit card. Mothers were initially told the gifts would last for the first 40 months of their child's life, but we have secured funding to continue the payments for three additional years (i.e., for a total of 76 months). Parents in the high cash gift group (n=400 in the study sample) are receiving a cash gift of $333 per month ($4,000 per year), while parents in the low cash gift group (n=600) are receiving a nominal monthly gift payment of $20 ($240 per year), also for 76 months.

In order to measure the impacts of the unconditional cash gift income on children's cognitive and behavioral development, we are assessing high and low cash gift group differences at ages 4, 6, and 8 (and, for a subset of measures, we capture interim development at ages 1, 2, and 3) in measures of cognitive, language, memory, self-regulation, and socio-emotional development. In order to understand the processes by which child impacts emerge, we are measuring a host of family process measures summarized in our pre-registration chart. Our data collection points are referred to as: "baseline", "age 1", "age 2," "age 3", "age 4", "age 6", and "age 8".

Additional information on the project, survey design, sample, variables, and COVID-19 pandemic adjustments are available from:

• The User Guides for Baseline, Age 1, Age 2, Age 3, and Age 4, which are included under the "Data and Documentation" tab
• The project's website: babysfirstyears.com

The researchers request that all peer-reviewed papers using BFY Data:

• be submitted to PubMed https://publicaccess.nih.gov immediately upon acceptance for publication
• include the following citation to the data in their bibliography:

Citation

Magnuson, Katherine A., Kimberly Noble, Greg J. Duncan, Nathan A. Fox, Lisa A. Gennetian, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, and Sarah Halpern-Meekin. Baby's First Years (BFY), New York City, New Orleans, Omaha, and Twin Cities, 2018-2023. ICPSR37871-v8. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], YYYY-MM-DD. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR37871.v8

• and include the following in their acknowledgements:

Acknowledgement

This research uses data from the Baby's First Years study. Research reported in this publication was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01HD087384 and 2R01HD087384. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. This research was additionally supported by the US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation; Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research-Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health; Andrew and Julie Klingenstein Family Fund; Annie E. Casey Foundation; Arnold Ventures; Arrow Impact; BCBS of Louisiana Foundation; Bezos Family Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Bill Hammack and Janice Parmelee, Brady Education Fund; Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (Silicon Valley Community Foundation); Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies; Child Welfare Fund; Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Fund; Ford Foundation; Greater New Orleans Foundation; Heising-Simons Foundation; Holland Foundation; Jacobs Foundation; JPB Foundation; J-PAL North America; Lozier Foundation; New York City Mayor's Office for Economic Opportunity; Perigee Fund; Robin Hood Foundation; Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Russell Sage Foundation; Sherwood Foundation; Valhalla Foundation; Weitz Family Foundation; W.K. Kellogg Foundation; and three anonymous donors.

Principal Investigators

Katherine Magnuson, PhD; University of Wisconsin-Madison, lead PI social and behavioral science

Kimberly Noble, MD, PhD; Teachers College, Columbia University, lead PI neuroscience

In alphabetical order:

Greg Duncan, PhD; University of California, Irvine

Nathan A. Fox, PhD; University of Maryland

Lisa A. Gennetian, PhD; Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy

Hirokazu Yoshikawa, PhD; New York University

Principal Investigators of Qualitative Substudy

Sarah Halpern-Meekin, PhD; University of Wisconsin-Madison

Katherine Magnuson, PhD; University of Wisconsin-Madison

Study Management

Lauren Meyer, Teachers College, Columbia University; National Project Director

Andrea Karsh, University of California, Irvine; Administrative Director

Matthew Maury, Duke University, Production and Retention Management

Study Co-Investigators

Sarah Black, PhD; University of New Orleans

William Fifer, PhD; Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology, Columbia University Medical Center

Michael Georgieff, MD; University of Minnesota

Joseph Isler, PhD; Columbia University Medical Center

Debra Karhson, PhD; University of New Orleans

Alicia Kunin-Batson, PhD, University of Minnesota

Connie Lamm, PhD; University of Arkansas

Dennis Molfese, PhD; University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Victoria Molfese, PhD; University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Jennifer Mize Nelson, PhD; University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Timothy Nelson, PhD; University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Sonya Troller-Renfree, PhD; Teachers College, Columbia University

Study Data Collectors

The Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, is responsible for recruitment and baseline, age-1, age-2, and age-3 data collection waves. Starting at age-4 through age-8, SRC is responsible for tracking families and assisting site-based staff in locating families. SRC data collection operations are overseen by: Stephanie Chardoul, Director of Survey Research Operations and Piotr Dworak, Senior Survey Specialist, Survey Research Operations.

Contact

To contact the study investigators, email them at [email protected]

Website: babysfirstyears.com

The Boston Reentry Study (BRS) was a mixed-methods, longitudinal study of 122 men and women released from Massachusetts state prisons to the Boston area, that focused on the transition into the community during participants' first year after prison release. The original data collection combined a panel survey, qualitative interviews, interviews with family members, and administrative records on criminal history. The BRS examined the complexity of integration after incarceration drawing from participants' life histories, including childhood experiences, to understand how individual biographies shape the transition into the community. This collection includes responses to 5 survey waves: (1) baseline, about one week before release from prison, (2) 1 week after prison release, (3) 2 months after prison release, (4) 6 months after prison release, and (5) 12 months after prison release. The survey collected information on housing, employment, income, health, family relationships, and criminal justice system contact.

The Carolina Abecedarian (ABC) Project and the Carolina Approach to Responsive Education (CARE) projects consist of two consecutive longitudinal studies on the effectiveness of early childhood educational intervention for children at high risk for developmental delays and school failure. Combined, the two studies test the hypothesis that child care, home visit, and home school resource interventions can enhance cognitive and academic outcomes for children at risk for school failure due to factors such as poverty, low maternal IQ, or low parental education. These studies provide the only experimental data regarding the efficacy of child care interventions that began during early infancy and lasted until the child entered kindergarten. In addition, the data allow for tests of the efficacy of intervention during the primary grades.

Research hypotheses include:

1. Within this high-risk sample, early cumulative risk will be negatively associated with young adult educational outcomes, employment outcomes, avoidance of teen parenthood, and avoidance of criminal behavior.
2. Early intervention will moderate the effects of risk such that the effects of increased risk would be weaker for those who received the intervention than for those who did not.
3. The early home environment would mediate any found effects for early risk and that early educational intervention would moderate the effects of the early home environment such that the effects of a poor-quality home environment would be weaker for those who received treatment compared to those who did not.

Further information can be found on the Carolina Abecedarian Project Web site.

The Carolina Abecedarian (ABC) Project and the Carolina Approach to Responsive Education (CARE) projects consist of two consecutive longitudinal studies on the effectiveness of early childhood educational intervention for children at high risk for developmental delays and school failure. Combined, the two studies test the hypothesis that child care, home visit, and home school resource interventions can enhance cognitive and academic outcomes for children at risk for school failure due to factors such as poverty, low maternal IQ, or low parental education. These studies provide the only experimental data regarding the efficacy of child care interventions that began during early infancy and lasted until the child entered kindergarten. In addition, the data allow for tests of the efficacy of intervention during the primary grades.

Research hypotheses include:

• Within this high-risk sample, early cumulative risk will be negatively associated with young adult educational outcomes, employment outcomes, avoidance of teen parenthood, and avoidance of criminal behavior.
• Early intervention will moderate the effects of risk such that the effects of increased risk would be weaker for those who received the intervention than for those who did not.
• The early home environment would mediate any found effects for early risk and that early educational intervention would moderate the effects of the early home environment such that the effects of a poor-quality home environment would be weaker for those who received treatment compared to those who did not.

Demographic variables included in this collection: gender, age, level of education.

The Chicago Longitudinal Study investigates the educational and social development of a same-age cohort of 1,539 low-income, minority children (93 percent African American) who grew up in high-poverty neighborhoods in central-city Chicago and attended government-funded kindergarten programs in the Chicago Public Schools in 1985-1986. Children were at risk of poor outcomes because they face social-environmental disadvantages including neighborhood poverty, family low-income status, and other economic and educational hardships.

Study Goals

The CLS is guided by four major goals:

1. To document patterns of school performance and social competence throughout the school-age years, including their school achievement and attitudes, academic progress, and psychosocial development.
2. To evaluate the effects of the Child-Parent Center and Expansion Program on child and youth development. Children and families had the opportunity to participate in this unique Head Start type early childhood intervention from ages three to nine (preschool to third grade).
3. To identify and better understand the educational and psychosocial pathways through which the effects of early childhood experiences are manifested, and more generally, through which scholastic and behavioral development proceeds.
4. To investigate the contributions to children's educational and social development of a variety of personal, family, school, and community factors, especially those that can be altered by program or policy interventions to prevent learning difficulties and promote positive outcomes.

Studies addressing the first two goals have been reported extensively. Participation in the Child-Parent Center Program for different lengths of time, for example, has been found to be significantly associated with higher levels of school achievement into adolescence, with higher levels of consumer skills, with enhanced parent involvement in children's education, and with lower rates of grade retention and special education, lower rates of early school dropout, and with lower rates of delinquent behavior (Reynolds, 1994, 1995, 2000; Reynolds and Temple, 1995, 1998; Temple, Reynolds, and Miedel, in press). Children's patterns of school and social adjustment over time (Reynolds and Bezruczko, 1993; Reynolds and Gill, 1994; Reynolds, 2000) as well as several methodological contributions (Reynolds and Temple, 1995; Reynolds, 1998a, 1998b) also have been reported elsewhere. Examples of studies addressing goals three and four are reported in a special issue of the Journal of School Psychology (Reynolds, 1999).

The Chicago Longitudinal Study is particularly appropriate for addressing these and other goals for two reasons. First, the CLS is one of the most extensive and comprehensive studies undertaken of a low-income, urban sample. Data were collected beginning during children's preschool years and have continued on a yearly basis throughout the school-age years. Multiple sources of data have been utilized in this on-going study, including teacher surveys, child surveys and interviews, parent surveys and interviews, school administrative records, standardized tests, and classroom observations. Thus, the impact of a variety of individual, family, and school-related factors can be investigated.

A second unique feature of the CLS is that although the project concerns child development, an emphasis is given to factors and experiences that are alterable by program or policy intervention both within and outside of schools. Besides information on early childhood intervention, information has been collected on classroom adjustment, parent involvement and parenting practices, grade retention and special education placement, school mobility, educational expectations of children, teachers, and parents, and on the school learning environment.

The Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS, formerly known as the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study) follows a cohort of nearly 5,000 children born in large, U.S. cities between 1998 and 2000. The study oversampled births to unmarried couples; and, when weighted, the data are representative of births in large U.S. cities at the turn of the century. The FFCWS was originally designed to address four questions of great interest to researchers and policy makers:

1. What are the conditions and capabilities of unmarried parents, especially fathers?
2. What is the nature of the relationships between unmarried parents?
3. How do children born into these families fare?
4. How do policies and environmental conditions affect families and children?

The FFCWS consists of interviews with mothers, fathers, and/or primary caregivers at birth and again when children are ages 1, 3, 5, 9, 15, and 22. The parent interviews collected information on attitudes, relationships, parenting behavior, demographic characteristics, health (mental and physical), economic and employment status, neighborhood characteristics, and program participation. Beginning at age 9, children were interviewed directly (either during the home visit or on the telephone). The direct child interviews collected data on family relationships, home routines, schools, peers, and physical and mental health, as well as health behaviors.

A collaborative study of the FFCWS, the In-Home Longitudinal Study of Pre-School Aged Children (In-Home Study) collected data from a subset of the FFCWS Core respondents at the Year 3 and 5 follow-ups to ask how parental resources in the form of parental presence or absence, time, and money influence children under the age of 5. The In-Home Study collected information on a variety of domains of the child's environment, including: the physical environment (quality of housing, nutrition and food security, health care, adequacy of clothing and supervision) and parenting (parental discipline, parental attachment, and cognitive stimulation). In addition, the In-Home Study also collected information on several important child outcomes, including anthropometrics, child behaviors, and cognitive ability. This information was collected through interviews with the child's primary caregiver, and direct observation of the child's home environment and the child's interactions with his or her caregiver.

Similar activities were conducted during the Year 9 follow-up. At the Year 15 follow-up, a condensed set of home visit activities were conducted with a subsample of approximately 1,000 teens. Teens who participated in the In-Home Study were also invited to participate in a Sleep Study and were asked to wear an accelerometer on their non-dominant wrist for seven consecutive days to track their sleep (Sleep Actigraphy Data) and that day's behaviors and mood (Daily Sleep Actigraphy and Diary Survey Data).

An additional collaborative study collected data from the child care provider (Year 3) and teacher (Years 9 and 15) through mail-based surveys. Saliva samples were collected at Year 9 and 15 (Biomarker file and Polygenic Scores). The Study of Adolescent Neural Development (SAND) COVID Study began data collection in May 2020 following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It included online surveys with the young adult and their primary caregiver.

The FFCWS began its seventh wave of data collection in October 2020, around the focal child's 22nd birthday. Data collection and interviews continued through January 2024. The Year 22 wave included a young adult (YA) survey with the original focal child and a primary caregiver (PCG) survey. Data were also collected on the children of the original focal child (referred to as Generation 3, or G3).

In 2017, the FFCWS team announced the Fragile Families (FF) Challenge, a collaborative effort in which participants were tasked with using machine learning methods and FFCWS data (Baseline to Year 9) to build a model that would predict six key outcomes at Year 15. Materials used in the FF Challenge have been archived in this collection.

Documentation for these files is available on the FFCWS website under Data and Documentation. For details of updates made to the FFCWS data files, please see the project's Data Alerts page.

Data collection for the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) of the National Institutes of Health under award numbers R01HD36916, R01HD39135, and R01HD40421, as well as a consortium of private foundations.

Below is the citation for use of the FFCWS data accessed through ICPSR. For information on additional citation requirements when using FFCWS in publications, please refer to this FAQ on the FFCWS project site.

China's dramatic economic and educational changes over the past 20 years have stimulated concerns about the education of children in rural areas. Recent empirical studies give evidence of growing disparities in educational opportunities between urban and rural areas and socio-economic and geographic inequities in basic-level educational participation within rural areas. These studies also point to a persisting gender gap in enrollment and to the disproportionate impact of poverty on girls' educational participation (Hannum 1998b; Zhang 1998). This study focused on the influence of poverty on the schooling of 11 to 14 year-old children in rural Gansu, an interior province in Northwest China characterized by high rates of rural poverty and a substantial dropout problem. Substantively, this study was innovative in adopting an integrated approach: it focused on the community, family, and school contexts in which children are educated. Methodologically, the study combined information on children's academic performance and school characteristics, with a household-based sample that allowed examination of the academic experiences of children who have left the education system as well as those who have persisted in it. Finally, the project was the baseline wave for the first large-scale, longitudinal study devoted to education and social inequality conducted in rural China. Results of this study contribute to an understanding of basic social stratification processes and provide insights for developing intervention strategies to improve educational access and effectiveness in rural China.

Wave 1 of this study (2000) has been archived and is available for download at ICPSR-DSDR. For information about Waves 2-4 (2004, 2007, 2009), please see the Gansu Survey of Children and Families Web site.

This randomized controlled trial examined the independent effect of village income inequality and individual income on individual health. Specifically, the study assessed how these two variables interacted with social capital to affect individual health. For the trial, 40 villages were selected for two experimental treatments.

In the first treatment, 13 villages were picked at random to receive 782kg of edible rice as in-kind income. The 782kg of rice was split equally between all households in the village. For the second treatment, another 13 villages were picked at random. Each village in the second treatment received the same amount of rice as the villages in the first treatment (782kg), but all of the rice went to the poorest 20 percent of households in the village, with each household getting the same amount of rice. All households in the remaining 14 villages and all households in the top 80 percent of the village income distribution of the second treatment acted as controls, and received 6kg of high-yielding, improved rice seeds.

The baseline survey was administered between February and May 2008, households received the rice between October 2008 and January 2009, and the end-line survey was administered between February and May 2009. Outcomes included anthropometric indicators of nutritional status, perceived health, and blood pressure.

The IPUMS Contextual Determinants of Health (CDOH) data series includes measures of disparities, policies, and counts, by state or county, for historically marginalized populations in the United States including Black, Asian, Hispanic/Latina/o/e/x, and LGBTQ+ persons, and women.

The IPUMS CDOH data are made available through ICPSR/DSDR for merging with the National Couples' Health and Time Study (NCHAT), United States, 2020-2021 (ICPSR 38417) by approved restricted data researchers. All other researchers can access the IPUMS CDOH data via the IPUMS CDOH website.

Unlike other IPUMS products, the CDOH data are organized into multiple categories related to Race and Ethnicity, Sexual and Gender Minority, Gender, and Politics. The CDOH measures were created from a wide variety of data sources (e.g., IPUMS NHGIS, the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Movement Advancement Project, and Myers Abortion Facility Database). Measures are currently available for states or counties from approximately 2015 to 2020.

The Gender measures in this release include the state-level poverty ratio, which compares the proportion of females living in poverty to the proportion of males living in poverty in a given state in a given year. To work with the IPUMS CDOH data, researchers will need to first merge the NCHAT data to DS1 (MATCH ID and State FIPS Data). This merged file can then be linked to the IPUMS CDOH datafile (DS2) using the STATEFIPS variable.

The NIH-funded Katrina@10 Program consists of an interrelated set of three primary data collection projects that focus on specific sub-populations who were uniquely affected by Hurricane Katrina: households along Louisiana and Mississippi's Gulf Coast, low-income parents from New Orleans, and Vietnamese families living in New Orleans. In addition, the program contains two secondary analyses of data that are more broadly representative of the overall affected population, and three cores (Administrative, Data Collection, Data Management and Dissemination) to support the set of research projects. The following research questions represent the studies together as a whole:

• How well does the socio-ecological model of disaster recovery developed by the research team (Abramson et al. 2010) predict recovery across the three cohort studies?
• How do trajectories of long-term recovery differ among and within these sub-populations?
• How do the trajectories of recovery compare to those of mainstream populations?
• How do the effects of predisposing factors (such as poverty) and degree-of-impact (such as flooding depth) vary among the three sub-populations?
• How do interpretations of the disaster, resilience, and recovery differ among respondents?
• What are the determinants of long-term recovery in domains such as mental and physical health, socio-economic status, and community and social roles? How are these domains related to each other across individuals and across sub-populations?

This collection contains data from the Gulf Coast Child and Family Health Study (GCAFH), a longitudinal cohort study of families living in the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast who had been displaced or sustained extensive household damage due to Hurricane Katrina. The GCAFH research team collected survey data from the initial cohort in 2006 (n=1,079) with multiple follow-ups through 2010, assessing post-disaster recovery via indicators such as economic recovery, social engagement, personal resilience, community cohesion, infrastructure stability, and physical and mental health.

The data in this collection is from the most recent survey follow-up with participants, conducted between 2016 and 2018. A public-use version (DS1) and restricted-use version (DS2) are available. Open-ended responses, continuous respondent age, continuous total household income, and a 7-category race variable have been masked in the public-use version. These items are available in the restricted-use version.

The NIH-funded KATRINA@10 Program consists of an interrelated set of three primary data collection projects that focus on specific sub-populations who were uniquely affected by Hurricane Katrina: households along Louisiana and Mississippi's Gulf Coast, low-income parents from New Orleans, and Vietnamese families living in New Orleans. In addition, the program contains two secondary analyses of data that are more broadly representative of the overall affected population, and three cores (Administrative, Data Collection, Data Management and Dissemination) to support the set of research projects. The following research questions represent the studies together as a whole:

• How well does the socio-ecological model of disaster recovery developed by the research team (Abramson et al. 2010) predict recovery across the three cohort studies?
• How do trajectories of long-term recovery differ among and within these sub-populations?
• How do the trajectories of recovery compare to those of mainstream populations?
• How do the effects of predisposing factors (such as poverty) and degree-of-impact (such as flooding depth) vary among the three sub-populations?
• How do interpretations of the disaster, resilience, and recovery differ among respondents?
• What are the determinants of long-term recovery in domains such as mental and physical health, socio-economic status, and community and social roles? How are these domains related to each other across individuals and across sub-populations?

This collection contains data from the Resilience in Survivors of Katrina (RISK) Project, which was a longitudinal study of low-income parents who lived in New Orleans at the time of Hurricane Katrina (August 2005). The initial study design was intended to increase educational attainment among college students, measuring economic status, social ties, and mental and physical health starting in 2003 (initial cohort n=1,019). However, with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the research design evolved to study the consequences of a disaster for the lives of vulnerable individuals and their families. Follow-up surveys and in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with participants at one year and five years post-Katrina, regardless of where participants lived.

The data in this collection is from the most recent survey follow-up with RISK Project participants (n=716), conducted between 2016 and 2018. A public-use version (DS1) and restricted-use version (DS2) are available. Open-ended responses and continuous variables for respondent age and total household income have been masked in the public-use version; these items are available in the restricted-use version.

The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) program was a randomized housing experiment administered by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that gave low-income families living in high-poverty areas the chance to move to lower-poverty areas. This Restricted Access Dataset (RAD) includes data from the 3,273 adults interviewed as part of the MTO long-term evaluation and is comprised of variables analyzed for the article "Neighborhood Effects on the Long-Term Well-Being of Low-Income Adults" that was published in the journal Science on September 21, 2012. The article focused on subjective well-being, physical and mental health, social networks, neighborhoods, housing, and economic self-sufficiency. Families were tracked from the baseline survey (1994-1998) through the long-term evaluation survey fielding period (2008-2010) with the purpose of determining the effects of "neighborhood" on participating families from five United States cities. Households were randomly assigned to one of three groups:

1. The low-poverty voucher (LPV) group (also called the experimental group) received Section 8 rental assistance certificates or vouchers that they could use only in census tracts with 1990 poverty rates below 10 percent. The families received mobility counseling and help in leasing a new unit. One year after relocating, families could use their voucher to move again if they wished, without any special constraints on location.
2. The traditional voucher (TRV) group (also called the Section 8 group) received regular Section 8 certificates or vouchers that they could use anywhere; these families received no special mobility counseling.
3. The control group received no certificates or vouchers through MTO, but continued to be eligible for project-based housing assistance and other social programs and services to which they would otherwise be entitled.

The dataset contains all outcomes and mediators analyzed for the Science article, as well as a variety of demographic and other baseline measures that were controlled for in the analysis. Demographic information includes age, gender, race/ethnicity, employment status, and education level.

Nearly 9 million Americans live in extreme-poverty neighborhoods, places that also tend to be racially segregated and dangerous. Yet, the effects on the well-being of residents of moving out of such communities into less distressed areas remain uncertain. Moving to Opportunity (MTO) is a randomized housing experiment administered by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development that gave low-income families living in high-poverty areas in five cities the chance to move to lower-poverty areas. Families were randomly assigned to one of three groups:

1. The low-poverty voucher (LPV) group (also called the experimental group) received Section 8 rental assistance certificates or vouchers that they could use only in census tracts with 1990 poverty rates below 10 percent. The families received mobility counseling and help in leasing a new unit. One year after relocating, families could use their voucher to move again if they wished, without any special constraints on location.

2. The traditional voucher (TRV) group (also called the Section 8 group) received regular Section 8 certificates or vouchers that they could use anywhere; these families received no special mobility counseling.

3. The control group received no certificates or vouchers through MTO, but continued to be eligible for project-based housing assistance and whatever other social programs and services to which they would otherwise be entitled.

Families were tracked from baseline (1994-1998) through the long-term evaluation survey fielding period (2008-2010) with the purpose of determining the effects of "neighborhood" on participating families. These particular files include data from the 3,273 adult interviews completed as part of the MTO long-term evaluation and are comprised of variables analyzed for the article "Neighborhood Effects on the Long-Term Well-Being of Low-Income Adults" that was published in the journal Science on September 21, 2012. Using data from the long-term evaluation, the article reports that moving from a high-poverty to lower-poverty neighborhood leads to long-term (10- to 15-year) improvements in adult physical and mental health and subjective well-being, despite not affecting economic self-sufficiency. Subjective well-being is more strongly affected by changes in neighborhood economic disadvantage than racial segregation, which is important because racial segregation has been declining since 1970, but income segregation has been increasing. The files submitted here contain all outcomes and mediators analyzed for the article as well as a variety of demographic and other baseline measures that were controlled for in the analysis.

The Women's Employment Study, or "WES" combined the insights of poverty researchers, epidemiologists, and social workers by analyzing the ways in which a broad range of labor market, mental health, physical health, and family problems affect a welfare recipient's ability to obtain and retain employment over time.

WES initially began in the Fall of 1997, and five waves of the survey were completed by early 2004, with a high proportion of the original panel sample retained throughout the study.

The unique aspects of WES rest largely with the broad range of barriers it measures, and the longitudinal nature of the study that allows researchers to look at employment and welfare experiences over time.