Some of the most important questions in social science and public policy relate to how individuals' lives and experiences have changed across time. However, most data spanning the late 19th and 20th centuries are cross-sectional -- large sets of individuals at one point in time. Cross-sectional data limit the study of economic and geographic mobility, family formation and dissolution, and the long-term impacts of adverse events, public policies, or family background. This proposal seeks to transform vital records data into the Longitudinal, Intergenerational Family Electronic Micro-Database (LIFE-M). LIFE-M comprehensively covers individuals born in the United States from 1880 to 1930, including representative samples of men and women, linking networks of families across up to four generations, and census information with measures of health, family background, and early life context.
LIFE-M allows for the comprehensive study of the economic and geographic mobility of individuals and families, family formation and dissolution, and the long-term effects of adverse events, public policies, and family resources on economic and family processes. LIFE-M is constructed by linking digitized vita records (birth, death and mortality certificates) with historical records from decennial census. The major advantage of the data assembled is the ability to carry out comprehensive, longitudinal analyses of large samples and subsamples of individuals and families over multiple generations. The LIFE-M database will be made accessible in a user-friendly format for researchers and policy analysts to use. The project is of groundbreaking utility for researchers in demography, geography, sociology, and economics. In addition, the project is of great utility to policy makers and policy analysts interested in the historical context for understanding mobility and demographic change in the United States over the 20th century.
