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Handbook of Methods National Longitudinal Surveys Concepts

National Longitudinal Surveys: Concepts

The National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS) are a set of nationally representative surveys designed to gather information at multiple points in time on the labor market activities and other significant life events of several groups of men and women. The surveys collect data on labor market activity, schooling, training, fertility, government program participation, health, income, assets, and much more. They provide a wealth of information about young people making the transition from school to work and into adulthood; the choices made by individuals in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s about their careers and families; and how older individuals prepare for and enter retirement.

As the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ only longitudinal person-level survey, the NLS focuses on capturing long-run changes in labor force behavior by interviewing the same individuals over extended time periods. The long-term objective of the NLS is to relate individuals’ earlier development and influences to their outcomes later in life. Over the course of each respondent’s life, information is collected on a wide variety of topics that influence or are influenced by labor market behavior, which help in the study of important topics such as

• employment and earnings of workers in the labor market;
• educational experience, achievement, and the transition from school to work;
• the effects of training on future employment and wages;
• the ability to advance out of low-wage jobs;
• relationships between work and various indicators of family well-being;
• the long-term effects of unemployment; and
• the retirement behavior of older workers, health, and aging.

The surveys also include other metrics, such as cognitive test scores, measures of noncognitive skills, high school transcripts, and college transcripts.

There are currently two active NLS cohorts: the NLS Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the NLS Youth 1997 (NLSY97). These youth cohorts were originally surveyed annually and are currently surveyed biennially. They include respondents who were in their early to late teens (or early twenties for the NLSY79) at the start of the survey. An additional cohort, the NLSY79 Child and Young Adult Survey, composed of the biological children of female members of the NLSY79, was surveyed from 1986 to 2020.

The four original NLS cohorts, which have now been discontinued, were collected through the National Longitudinal Surveys of Mature and Young Women (NLSW) and the National Longitudinal Surveys of Older and Young Men (NLSM). Between 1966 and 1983 older men in the NLSM were surveyed 11 times and younger men were surveyed 12 times; women in the NLSW were surveyed 22 times between 1967 and 2003.

NLS data are important tools for economists, sociologists, and other researchers in the study of labor supply, earnings and income distribution, job search and separation, training, and other human capital investments. In addition, these data are used to study the effect of government policies and programs on labor market behaviors. The NLS Annotated Bibliography (which provides citations and abstracts of thousands of publications, dissertations, and other research papers that have used NLS data over the years) tracks much of the work that has been generated by the NLS since the mid-1960s. In addition, several publications have highlighted the use of NLS data for influential studies in several research domains. Recent examples include papers by Aughinbaugh, Pierret, and Rothstein (2015) and Cooksey (2018).^⁠1