The """"""""mature male"""""""" cohort of the National Longitudinal Surveys of Labor Market Experience (NLS) will be reinterviewed in 1989. The nationally representative NLS sample (5,020 men aged 45-59) was surveyed first in 1966 and periodically thereafter till 1983. Close to 2,000 men will be available for interview in 1989- an estimated 75 percent of the survivors of the original sample, and reasonably representative of men 68-82 in that year. In addition to the resurvey of survivors, date and cause of death and last occupation will be obtained for decedents, and surviving widows will also be interviewed. Interview schedules will be developed with the advice of a multidisciplinary panel of gerontological researchers. Portions of earlier NLS schedules will be repeated, but there will be additional measures of physical and psychological well-being. Along with the already existing information on work and retirement experience, economic circumstances, and health status, the resulting data set will provide unprecedented opportunities for a variety of gerontological research including: (a) the progression of disability: (b) analysis of mortality: (c) relationship between husband's death and the surviving widow;s health and financial circumstances; (d) adequacy of postretirement medical care benefits: (e) work abilities and proclivities of the aged: (f) extent and character of labor market activity among men well past retirement age; (g) adjustment to retirement over periods as long as a decade or more: (h) variations in quality of life of the elderly according to demographic and experiential variables; (i) trends in income and wealth with advancing age: and (j) methodological studies (e.g., validity of occupational information on death certificates: comparisons of contemporaneously and retrospectively reported retirement decisions and income/employment information. Data tapes and documentation will be made available to members of the research community early in 1991, about 20 months after field work is completed by the Bureau of the Census. A summary report analyzing descriptive data on the topics described above will be completed by November 30,1991.
| Parnes, H S; Sommers, D G (1994) Shunning retirement: work experience of men in their seventies and early eighties. J Gerontol 49:S117-24 |
