Purpose: To provide states and communities with information about their social, housing, and economic conditions. Data collected will aid state and local officials in meeting their new responsibilities under devolution, including tracking child, family, and elderly well-being; determining where to locate new highways, schools, and hospitals; documenting a town's workforce and potential; and evaluating programs such as welfare.

Design: A large monthly household survey. The ACS will update decennial census data by collecting the same information every year that the census collects only once every ten years. In the first year- 1997- the survey was conducted in eight sites. The number of sites will increase each year until 2001, when the ACS will provide data for all states, cities, counties, and metropolitan areas with populations of 250,000 or more. In later years, data will be available for smaller areas and population groups. In 2010, the ACS will replace the decennial census long form.

Purpose: To provide information on the fifty states and the District of Columbia in areas including income security, health, child well-being, demographic, fiscal and political conditions, and social services. As responsibility for policies in many areas shifts from the federal to the state level, this information can be used to compare states with each other or with the nation as a whole, to track trends over time, or to analyze relationships among different state characteristics.

Design: Data is gathered from a variety of sources.

Purpose: The National Survey of America's Families provides a comprehensive look at the well-being of adults and children and reveals sometimes striking differences among the 13 states studied in depth. The survey provides quantitative measures of the quality of life in America. It pays particular attention to low-income families. See the Research Forum project summary.

Design: The survey is representative of the noninstitutionalized, civilian population of persons under age 65 in the nation as a whole and in 13 states: Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. Together, these states are home to more than half the nation's population and represent a broad range of fiscal capacity, child well-being, and approaches to government programs.

Purpose: To provide information on the labor force characteristics of the U.S. population. CPS data are used as indicators of the U.S. economy and for planning and evaluating government programs. Supplemental questions are often added to produce estimates on a variety of topics including school enrollment, income, previous work experience, health, employee benefits, and work schedules.

Design: A monthly survey of about 50,000 households, conducted for more than 50 years. The sample provides estimates for the nation as a whole and serves as part of model-based estimates for individual states and other geographic areas.

ICPSR maintains and provides access to a vast archive of social science data for research and instruction, and offers training in quantitative methods to facilitate effective data use. To ensure that data resources are available to future generations of scholars, ICPSR preserves data, migrating them to new storage media as changes in technology warrant. In addition, ICPSR provides user support to assist researchers in identifying relevant data for analysis and in conducting their research projects.

Purpose: To study in detail the longitudinal experiences of a particular age group of young Americans, as well as to analyze the disparate life course experiences of such groups as women, Hispanics, blacks, and the economically disadvantaged.

Design: A nationally representative sample of 12,686 young men and young women who were 14 to 22 years of age when they were first surveyed in 1979. A new NLS cohort of young people aged 12 through 16 sponsored by the BLS was added in 1997. Click here for survey results released April 1999.

The NLSY Mothers & Children provides data about the linkages between maternal - family behaviors and attitudes and subsequent child development. Information has been collected from NLSY mothers about the birth and early childhood of their children. In 1986, a battery of child cognitive, socioemotional, and physiological assessments was added and is now administered biannually.

Purpose: The National Survey of America's Families provides a comprehensive look at the well-being of adults and children and reveals sometimes striking differences among the 13 states studied in depth. The survey pays particular attention to low-income families, and reporting on important aspects about their lives and how they differ from the lives of children and adults in families with higher incomes.

Design: The survey is representative of the noninstitutionalized, civilian population of persons under age 65 in the nation as a whole and in 13 states: Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. A second survey round is being conducted in 1999.

The NSCAW will be carried out over a six-year period through September 2003. The sample will include a cohort of 6,000 children and adolescents who have come into contact with the child welfare system. Data will be collected in four annual waves from the children, their biological mother, primary caregiver (if different), caseworker, teacher, and agency administrative records. The children will be selected from a national sample of child welfare agencies located in 100 Primary Sampling Units across the country.

Purpose: To collect data on dynamic aspects of economic and demographic behavior, including sociological and psychological measures. Other topics in recent years include extensive supplements on education, military combat experience, health, kinship networks, and wealth.

Design: A longitudinal survey of a representative sample of U.S. individuals and the families in which they reside, ongoing since 1968. The data are collected annually, and the data files contain the full span of information collected over the course of the study. PSID began with a sample size of 5,000 households. By 1995, when the sample was 8,700 households, information had been collected on over 50,000 individuals. PSID data can be used for cross-sectional, longitudinal, and intergenerational analysis and for studying both individuals and families.

The PSID Child Development Supplement began in 1997 to provide researchers with a comprehensive, nationally representative, and longitudinal data base of children and their families with which to study the dynamic process of early human capital formation. This Supplement was created, in part, to collect data about the consequences to children and their families of welfare devolution, as supported by the August 1996 welfare legislation.

Purpose: To improve the measurement of the economic situation of persons, families, and households in the United States, and to provide a tool for managing and evaluating government transfer and service programs. 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.

Design: The survey design is a continuous series of national panels, with sample size ranging from approximately 14,000 to 36,700 interviewed households. The duration of each panel ranges from 2 1/2 years to 4 years. Also, see Survey of Program Dynamics.

Purpose: To collect demographic, social, and economic data that permits the evaluation of the welfare reform legislation and its impact on the American people over time. These data will provide the basis for an overall evaluation of how welfare reforms are achieving the aims of the Administration and the Congress, and meeting the needs of the American people.

Design: A longitudinal survey of a nationally representative sample of the U.S. population. SPD will provide ten years of panel data about households with children, with an over representation of households in and near the poverty threshold. The SPD has three phases:
1) The Bridge Survey, in which a modified version of the March 1997 Current Populations Survey was used to interview approximately 38,000 households sample persons in the 1992 and 1993 SIPP panels, bringing them back into the SPD sample;
2) Full implementation of the 1998 SPD, including a self-administered adolescent questionnaire and a 1997 pretest, with approximately 17,500 households;
3) Continued implementation of SPD in 1999 and later, with the addition of a topical module focusing on child well-being.