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The Americans' Changing Lives (ACL) survey series is an ongoing, nationally representative, longitudinal study focusing especially on differences between Black and White Americans in middle and late life. These data constitute the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth waves in a panel survey covering a wide range of sociological, psychological, mental, and physical health items. Wave I of the study began in 1986 with a nation face-to-face survey of 3,617 adults ages 25 and up, with Black Americans and people aged 60 and over over-sampled at twice the rate of the others. Wave II constitutes face-to-face re-interviews in 1989 of those still alive. Survivors have been re-interviewed by telephone, and when necessary face-to-face, in 1994 (Wave III), 2001/02 (Wave IV), 2011 (Wave V), and 2019/21 (Wave VI).

Please note that for Wave VI, the majority of data collection occurred in 2019, with only a small subset (n=39) of participants surveyed in 2021.

ACL was designed and sought to investigate the following: (1) The ways in which a wide range of activities and social relationships that people engage in are broadly "productive," (2) how individuals adapt to acute life events and chronic stresses that threaten the maintenance of health, effective functioning, and productive activity, and (3) sociocultural variations in the nature, meaning, determinants, and consequences of productive activity and relationships. Among the topics covered are interpersonal relationships (spouse/partner, children, parents, friends), sources and levels of satisfaction, social interactions and leisure activities, traumatic life events (physical assault, serious illness, divorce, death of a loved one, financial or legal problems), perceptions of retirement, health behaviors (smoking, alcohol consumption, overweight, rest), and utilization of health care services (doctor visits, hospitalization, nursing home institutionalization, bed days). Also included are measures of physical health, psychological well-being, and indices referring to cognitive functioning.

Demographic information provided for individuals includes household composition, number of children and grandchildren, employment status, occupation and work history, income, family financial situation, religious beliefs and practices, ethnicity, race, education, sex, and region of residence.

This data collection is comprised of data from the 2006 Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC), and is a part of the Current Population Survey (CPS) Series. The Census Bureau conducts the ASEC (known as the Annual Demographic File prior to 2003) over a three-month period, in February, March, and April, with most of the data collected in the month of March. The ASEC uses two sets of survey questions, the basic CPS and a set of supplemental questions.

The CPS, administered monthly, is a labor force survey providing current estimates of the economic status and activities of the population of the United States. Specifically, the CPS provides estimates of total employment (both farm and nonfarm), nonfarm self-employed persons, domestics, and unpaid helpers in nonfarm family enterprises, wage and salaried employees, and estimates of total unemployment.

In addition to the basic CPS questions, respondents were asked questions from the ASEC, which provides supplemental data on poverty, geographic mobility/migration, and work experience. Comprehensive work experience information was given on the employment status, occupation, and industry of persons aged 15 and over. Additional data for persons aged 15 and older were available concerning weeks worked and hours per week worked, reason not working full time, total income and supplemental income components. Additional data are included that cover training and assistance received under welfare reform programs such as job readiness training, child care services, or job skill training. Data covering nine noncash income sources: food stamps, school lunch program, employer-provided group health insurance plan, employer-provided pension plan, personal health insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, CHAMPUS or military health care, and energy assistance are also included.

Demographic variables include age, sex, race, Hispanic origin, marital status, veteran status, educational attainment, occupation, and income. Data on employment and income refer to the previous calendar year, although demographic data refer to the time of the survey.

The original ASEC data provided by the Census Bureau are distributed in a hierarchical file structure, with three record types present: Household, Family, and Person. The ASEC is designed to be a multistage stratified sample of housing units, where the hierarchical file structure can be thought of as a person within a family within a household unit. Here the main unit of analysis is the household unit. For ease of analysis at the person-level, ICPSR created a rectangular file structure that contains a record for every person with the respective Household and Family variables prepended to the Person variables. Part 1 contains the rectangular data file and Part 2 contains the original hierarchical data file.

The purpose of the Early Years of Marriage (EYM) Project was to determine ways in which the early development of marriage for Black couples and White couples affect the mental and physical health of spouses, marital stability, long-term marital outcomes, patterns of family life and, for those who divorce, individual adjustment to family disruption. The EYM Project began in 1986 with 373 newlywed couples--174 White couples and 199 Black couples. The marriages were all intra-racial and it was the first marriage for both spouses.

Year 1 interviews, which queried the couples on various aspects of married life, began after four to nine months into the marriage. Very few respondents who originally participated in Year 1 of the study refused to participate in subsequent phases of the study. In 1986 (Year 1) and 1988 (Year 3) spouses were interviewed in their homes separately and together, with the interviews conducted by interviewers of the same race. In 1987 (Year 2) and 1989 (Year 4) shorter individual telephone interviews were conducted.

In all four years, respondents were queried on a wide variety of topics such as feelings and perceptions of their own family, spouse, in-laws, and their spouse's friends, family planning, how many children they should have, how the children should be reared, childcare, and household roles and responsibilities. A series of questions was asked about reasons for getting married, how satisfying married life was, what, if any, were the special pleasures and good feelings that came from being married, how often arguments and disagreements occurred, main reasons for arguments, and how they were eventually resolved. A series of questions were also asked regarding the mental and physical health of the spouse, job satisfaction, job security, and how the job affected the family. In Year 2 and Year 4 interviews (Parts 2-4), a series of questions regarding separation and divorce were also asked.

Demographic variables include race, gender, age, level of education, occupation, income, and religious preference.

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.

The National Survey of American Life Adolescent Supplement (NSAL-A), 2001-2004, was designed to estimate the lifetime-to-date and current prevalence, age-of-onset distributions, course, and comorbidity of DSM-IV disorders among African American and Caribbean adolescents in the United States; to identify risk and protective factors for the onset and persistence of these disorders; to describe patterns and correlates of service use for these disorders; and to lay the groundwork for subsequent follow-up studies that can be used to identify early expressions of adult mental disorders. In addition and similar to the NSAL adult dataset (Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (CPES), 2001-2003 [United States] (ICPSR 20240)), the adolescent dataset contains detailed measures of health; social conditions; stressors; distress; racial identity; subjective, neighborhood conditions; activities and school; media; and social and psychological protective and risk factors. Numerous variables from the adult dataset have been merged into the adolescent dataset, as the NSAL adult and adolescent respondents reside in the same households. Some of these variables apply to the entire household (i.e. region, urbanicity, and family income), while others apply specifically to the NSAL adult respondent living in the adolescent's household (i.e. adult years of education, adult marital status, and adult nativity [foreign-born vs. US born]). The immigration measures were asked of Caribbean black adult respondents only. No comparable measures assess the immigration and generational status of the Caribbean black adolescent respondents. The adult dataset measures are merged into the adolescent dataset to assist in approximating these measures for adolescent respondents. The NSAL adolescent dataset also includes variables for other non-core and experimental disorders. These include tobacco use/nicotine dependence, premenstrual syndrome, minor depression, recurrent brief depression, hypomania, and hypomania sub-threshold. Demographic variables include age, race and ethnicity, ancestry or national origins, height, weight, marital status, income, and education level.

Parent and Children Together (PACT) Responsible Fatherhood (RF) project is an examination of the effects of federally funded responsible fatherhood programs. This project was interested in learning about service implications, the needs and experiences of participants, and the effectiveness of these services. To examine how parenting, relationships, socioeconomic status, and well-being are being affected by responsible fatherhood programs.

This dataset is focused on individuals representing a few in the population. The 4 programs that participated in the Responsible Fatherhood study were: Connections to Success in Kansas and Missouri, Fathers' Support Center in Missouri, FATHER Project at Goodwill-Easter Seals Minnesota, and Urban Ventures in Minnesota.

This data collection covered topics such as parental involvement, parenting skills, relationship status, child engagement, employment, criminal justice involvement, housing stability, and mental well-being. The demographic variables are race, age, monthly income, and education level.

This data collection is part of a longitudinal survey designed to provide detailed information on the economic situation of households and persons in the United States. These data examine the distribution of income, wealth, and poverty in American society and gauge the effects of federal and state programs on the well-being of families and individuals.

There are three basic elements contained in the survey. The first is a control card that records basic social and demographic characteristics for each person in a household, as well as changes in such characteristics over the course of the interviewing period. These include age, sex, race, ethnic origin, marital status, household relationship, education, and veteran status. Limited data are provided on housing unit characteristics such as the number of units in the structure, tenure, access, and complete kitchen facilities. The second element is the core portion of the questionnaire, with questions repeated at each interview on labor force activity, types and amounts of income, and participation in various cash and noncash benefit programs for each month of the four-month reference period. Data for employed persons include number of hours and weeks worked, earnings, and weeks without a job. Nonworkers are classified as unemployed or not in the labor force. In addition to providing income data associated with labor force activity, the core questions cover nearly 50 other types of income. Core data also include postsecondary school attendance, public or private subsidized rental housing, low-income energy assistance, and school breakfast and lunch participation. The third element consists of topical modules, which are a series of supplemental questions asked during selected household visits. Topical modules include some core data to link individuals to the core files. For more information on this study, see the SIPP Web site.

Information about child care is located in the topical modules for Waves III, V, VI, and VIII.

1. The Wave I Topical Module covers recipiency and employment history.
2. The Wave II Topical Module includes work disability, education and training, household relationships, marital, migration, and fertility histories.
3. The Wave III Topical Module covers medical expenses and utilization of health care, work-related expenses and child support, assets and liabilities, real estate, shelter costs, dependent care, vehicles, value of business, interest earning accounts, rental properties, stocks and mutual fund shares, mortgages, other assets, and child well-being.
4. The Wave IV Topical Module covers adult well-being, work schedule, taxes, child care, and annual income and retirement accounts.
5. Data in the Wave V Topical Module describe child support agreements, school enrollment and financing, support for nonhousehold members, adult and child disability, and employer-provided health benefits.
6. The Wave VI Topical Module covers medical expenses and utilization of health care, work-related expenses, child support paid and child care, poverty, assets and liabilities, real estate, shelter costs, dependent care, vehicles, value of business, interest earning accounts, rental properties, stock and mutual fund shares, mortgages, and other financial investments.
7. The Wave VII Topical Module covers retirement, pension plan coverage, annual income, taxes, and retirement accounts. Variables on informal caregiving, such as who received unpaid care and how long they were cared for, are located in a separate topical module file.
8. The Wave VIII Topical Module covers welfare reform, child well-being, and child care.