Marriage and Cohabitation Data in the National Longitudinal Surveys

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Marriage and Cohabitation Data in the National
Longitudinal Surveys

• Alison Aughinbaugh
• NLS Summer Workshop 2007

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Why NLS Data on Marriage are Valuable

• Key Features
• timing of marriage and other events in
  respondents lives
• repeated observations
• ability to merge in geographic information

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Topics for which NLS Marriage Data have been Used

• Marriage and child-bearing
• Marital search and marriage
• Marriage and labor market outcomes
• Effect of marriage on child outcomes
• Marital disruptions and remarriage
• Marriage and health
• Marriage and alcohol/drug use
• Marriage and Income

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Listings in NLS Bibliography on Unions

• Keyword Count
• Marital Conflict 2
• Marital Disruption 85
• Marital Dissolution 52
• Marital Instability 25
• Marital Satisfaction 18
• Marital Status 414
• Marriage 307
• Cohabitation 62
• Divorce 177

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NLSY79

• Current marital status
• Available in all years, asked at start of
  marriage section
• Two created variables specifying marital status
  at interview date
• a. More complete (NEVER MARRIED, MARRIED,
  SEPARATED, DIVORCED, REMARRIED, WIDOWED)
• b. Collapsed (NEVER MARRIED, MARRIED, SPOUSE
  PRESENT, OTHER)

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Marital HistoryHow data are collected

• From 1980 on, data on marital changes are
  collected in an event history format
• At each interview, respondents are reminded of
  their marital status at the date of the last
  interview and marital status at last interview is
  verified.
• Asked, whether they had a change in marital
  status. If yes, the respondent is asked to
  report the type of the first change (marriage,
  divorce, etc.) and the date of that change in
  marital status.

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Marital HistoryHow data are collected

• 3. Asked if any other changes. If yes, asked
  to report the second change and the date of that
  change. This continues until respondent reports
  that there were no other changes.

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Marriage Variables Created from Event History Data

• Created variables indicating the beginning and
  ending dates (month and year) of marriages
• Start dates for up to 3 marriages
• End dates for up to 2 marriages
• Age at 1st marriage
• Number of months between first marriage and first
  birth

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Cohabitation Data

• In all years, indicator of whether respondent is
  living with an opposite sex partner (comes from
  hh roster)
• 1990 and 1992 on
• Month and year when respondent began living with
  opposite sex partner
• Whether respondent lived with spouse before
  marriage
• Month and year when respondent and spouse began
  living together

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Cohabitation History

• Beginning in the 2002 survey, during any period
  of at least 3 months in which the respondent was
  unmarried, we collect spells of cohabitation that
  are at least 3 months in durationincluding start
  and stop dates

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Cohabitation/Relationship History-Created
Variables

• Based on the information in the household rosters
  (including names which are available at CHRR, but
  not to the rest of us)
• Two variables have been created for each year
• 1. NUMSPPTRprovides the id number of the
  current/most recent spouse or partner (takes
  values of 0 to 9)
• 2. RELSPPTRprovides the relationship of r to
  current spouse or partner
• -999 Never reported a spouse/partner
• 0 No current spouse/partner
• 1 Spouse
• 33 Partner
• 36 Other

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Cohabitation/Relationship History-Created
Variables

• Caveats
• Cannot tell whether these individuals were in
  the respondents hh between rounds
• Will have missed partners who were present for a
  short time between rounds

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Spouse Characteristics

• Information collected in every round for a spouse
  or partner listed on household roster (age, hgc,
  employment in past year)
• Spouse labor supply information collected in
  marital history section in all survey years
• occupation
• weeks worked
• hours worked per week
• Spouses religious affiliation and attendance
  collected in 1982, 1998, 2000 through 2006
• Whether and number of times spouse has been
  married prior to this marriage

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Attitudes and Expectations concerning Marriage

• 1979 survey, for all respondents who have never
  been married collect the age at which they expect
  to marry
• 1988, 1992, 1994-2006 interviews, asked
  attitudes/quality of marriage questions of
  mothers living with spouse or partner (in the
  child care section of the questionnaire)
• Items on dating in 1988, 1992, 1994-2006
  interviews. Ask frequency of dating, childrens
  reaction to dating, aspirations with respect to
  marriage (in the child care section of the
  questionnaire)

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NLSY79 Young Adults

• Dating and Relationship History
• Asked about dating behavior
• Confirm marital status at the date of last
  interview
• Collect marital status at current interview
• Marriage and cohabitation histories
• Start and stop dates of relationship
• Dates of change of legal marital status of
  relationship
• For spouses and partners, collect some
  characteristicsage, race, religion, highest
  grade completed, labor supply, rate of pay
• Relationship quality
• No Created Variables

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NLS Womens Cohort

• Current marital status
• Created variables provide marital history
  information (available in 99 and on)
• Widowhood
• a. Husbands time and medical needs at end of
  life
• b. Financial situation after husbands death
• Spouse characteristics collected in all years
  except 1968/from 1983 on in MW/YW
• Spouse work experience collected from 1992/1993
  on in MW/YM

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Marriage History in Womens Cohorts of NLS

• In the early years (up to 1978) and from the
  early 80s on, a history of marital transition
  are collected
• Created variables on marital history are
  available with the release of the1999 (and later)
  data.

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Marriage History in Womens Cohorts of NLS

• A marital history has been constructed using the
  available information.
• The user should be aware that different questions
  are asked at different points in time. In
  different surveys, the following information is
  collected
• month and year of first marriage
• month and year of most recent marriage
• month and year of each marital change since date
  of last interview
• month and year of becoming divorced, widowed,
  separated.

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Created Variables

• Beginning with 1999 data release, created
  variables on marital history are available.
• STDATxx Start date of marriage xx
• ENDATxx End date of marriage xx

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NLSY97

• The NLSY97 marriage section builds off of what
  was
• learned from the NLSY79 marriage sectionbut
  faces new
• challenges.
• 1. Important to know cohabitation as well as
  legal marital status.
• 2. Cohabitation dates may be more difficult
  for respondents to report. Cohabitation may be
  a gradual process.
• 3. Marriage implies two people of opposite
  sex, but cohabitation does not.
• 4. Marriage does not always mean cohabitation.
  In at least 10 cases in the NLSY97, the
  respondent had never lived with spouse between
  marriage and subsequent interview.

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Structure of NLSY97 Marriage and Cohabitation
Section

• The section in the NLSY97 is set up differently
  than that for
• the NLSY79.
• Concentrates on tracking cohabitation spells and
  captures marital transitions obliquelyasks
  whether married when began cohabitation and asks
  about changes in marital status within
  cohabitation
• Starts by defining cohabitation as a sexual
  relationship in which partners of the opposite
  sex establish one household and live together.
• Then explicitly checks respondents marriage/cohab
  status at last interview
• It tries to roster any opposite-sex partner with
  whom the respondent lives and then record all
  changes in legal marital status for each
  relationship.

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Marital Status

• Martial status at the time of the survey is
  collected
• Created variables that provide current marital
  and cohabitation status are available

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Partner Roster

• At each survey respondents are asked to list each
  opposite-sex partner with whom the respondent had
  a sexual relationship and lived for at least one
  month
• For each partner on the list, the respondent is
  asked when s/he started and stopped living with
  this person

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Partner Roster (continued)

• If partner is not in youths current household,
  additional information is collected
  characteristics at time they started living
  together
• (1) age
• (2) race and ethnicity
• (3) highest grade
• (4) whether employed
• (5) whether receiving government assistance
• Survey goes back through list of partners and
  collects dates at which changes in marital status
  occurred in relationship with each partner

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Quality of Relationship

• For current spouse/partner, respondent is also
  asked to rate relationship in the domains of
  closeness, caring, and conflict.

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Using the NLSY97 Marriage and Cohabitation Data

• Difficult to present these dataover 350
  variables released each round in the marriage and
  cohabitation section
• To help make these data tractable they are
  supplemented with 3 types of variables
• 1. Created variables
• 2. Event history variables
• 3. Roster variables

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Created Variables

• Accumulate information found in similar raw
  variables to
• provide summary measure
• Total number of marriages (CV_MARRIAGES_TTL)
• Total number of cohabitations (CV_COHAB_TTL)
• Beginning date of respondents 1st marriage
  (CV_FIRST_MARRY_DATE_M/Y), (CV_FIRST_MARRY_MONTH)
• Beginning date of respondents 1st cohabitation
  (CV_FIRST_COHAB_DATE_M/Y), (CV_FIRST_COHAB_MONTH)

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Marriage/Cohab Event History Data

• Month-by-month arrays that present respondents
  marital and cohabitation changes and the identity
  of spouse/partner for each month
• Arrays begin with the month the respondent turned
  14 and end with the month of the respondents
  most recent interview

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Marriage Arrays

• MAR_STATUS
• MAR_COHABITATIONtells which partner r is living
  with in each month
• Note Partner ids begin with 1 (101, 102, ) and
  spouse ids begin with 2 (201, )
• MAR_PARTNER_LINKlinks partner/spouse id with
  main survey, so that characteristics collected in
  the survey can be matched to partner. This array
  indicates the year in which the partner appeared
  on the roster and the order in which s/he was
  listed. For instance, if MAR_PARTNER_LINK equals
  9801, the partner was first reported in the 1998
  survey (round 2).

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Roster Variables

• Report the characteristics of spouses and
• partners
• Race/ethnicity
• Educational attainment
• Employment
• Whether receiving government assistance

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Dating

• In the SAQ, all respondents are asked whether
  ever been on a date If yes, asked age at the
  first date.
• All respondents are asked how often s/he dated
  and the number of different people s/he went out
  with on a date in the past year or since the last
  interview
• Round 6 and on, expanded questions on dating to
  gather more detailed information on dating
  patterns and the progression of relationships.
• For the most recent romantic partner of the
  respondent, collect initials of romantic partner,
  race, gender, whether he or she was of Hispanic
  or Latino origin, and educational attainment.
• In subsequent rounds, collect information on
  whether relationship is on-going or how
  relationship ended, whether respondent ever
  cohabitated, ever married dating partner

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Descriptive Statistics based on
Marriage/Cohabitation by Age 20--Females
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Descriptive Statistics based on
Marriage/Cohabitation by Age 20Males
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Data Exercises

• Create a dummy variable that indicates whether
  the respondent cohabitated by age 21
• What is the age of the respondents first
  partner?
• Use tag set marcoh2b-sw07.nlsy97