Recent Challenges and Innovations in Panel Surveys: Insights from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics

Narayan Sastry, University of Michigan

The U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) is the world’s longest-running panel survey. It collects detailed information on income and wealth dynamics, but also extensive data on demographic behavior and outcomes—including fertility and contraception, cohabitation and marriage, education, health and mortality, migration, living arrangements, time use, and other related Data topics. are collected on the original families and their descendants, providing information on intergenerational connections in behavior and outcomes. Data from PSID are widely used by demographers and other social scientists. Since the inception of PSID in 1968, and over the course of data collection for 43 waves over 56 years, the study has encountered challenges that are common to almost all large-scale population-based surveys around the world. In this paper, we provide an overview of recent challenges faced by PSID and descriptions of the innovations that have been developed, tested, and implemented in response. Among the recent challenges we address in this paper are declining response rates, the need to sample and incorporate new immigrants to the U.S., respondents’ interest in completing interviews by the web rather than by telephone or in person, and increasing pressure from sponsors to reduce or limit the increase of costs.

Keywords: Data and Methods, Longitudinal studies , Randomized controlled experiments

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