This project will conduct the two final waves in 2013 and 2015 of the Transition into Adulthood (TA) study that is part of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Begun in 1968, PSID is a longitudinal survey of a nationally-representative sample of U.S. families and has collected data on the same families and their descendents for 37 waves over 43 years (as of 2011). The TA study will capture the full process of development from childhood, through adolescence, and into early adulthood for a cohort of 3,653 PSID children aged 0 to 12 years who in 1997 were enrolled in the first wave of the PSID Child Development Supplement (CDS). A second wave of CDS was collected on these same children in 2002 when they were 5 to 18 years old and a third wave was collected in 2007/08 when the children were 10 to 18 years of age. PSID launched the Transition into Adulthood (TA) project in 2005 as the oldest CDS participants graduated from high school. A transitional interview was designed with questions that bridge the content of the CDS and the PSID. Three waves of TA have been completed on this cohort to date-in 2005, 2007, and 2009-and a fourth wave is underway for 2011. In this project, we will conduct the two final waves of TA in 2013 and 2015, to capture the transition for the youngest members of the CDS cohort.
The specific aims are to: First, collect 60 minutes of information in 2013 from CDS youth who have reached 18 years of age by the time of data collection; second, to collect 60 minutes of information again in 2015 from CDS youth, all of whom will have reached 18 years of age by the time of data collection; and, third, to document and distribute these data in PSID-CDS web-based Online Data Center archive and promote the use of the combined CDS-TA archive. For CDS youth already enrolled in TA, the 2013 and 2015 waves will add two additional rounds of information on this critical developmental period. For the remaining CDS youth who reach 18 years of age between 2011 and 2015, we will gather one or two new waves of data, depending on exactly when they turn 18 years of age. These data are critical for our understanding of the transition from adolescence into adulthood in the U.S. today. By augmenting the rich panel information in the CDS with the TA data, this project will provide a rich CDS-TA panel of children from birth and preschool through primary and secondary school and then through entry into the world of work or of higher education in conjunction with early family formation. Although a rich panel from birth to the mid-20s is valuable in its own right, the information on these children will be augmented as they continue in the PSID through their full life course. Moreover, because these children are the lineal descendants of the original PSID families, one can use currently on-line tools for intergenerational and historical analysis in the PSID Online Data Center.
The early adult years, between the ages of 18 and 28, is a period when individuals are no longer adolescents but many have not yet completely assumed adult roles in all domains of life. We currently know little about the personal and social characteristics that either facilitate or impede the successful passage through this period into a productive adulthood. This project continues building a national data resource for studying these issues by collecting the PSID Transition into Adulthood study for 2013 and 2015.
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