The PSID in Research and Policy

Abstract

The PSID has remained a valuable vehicle for evidence-based policy research for decades and should remain so for many more. In this short review, I cover major policy-related strengths from PSID research in the areas of event history analysis; mobility and volatility; cross national comparisons; health and health insurance; mobility into and out of poverty; the effects of parental income on children; and the use of the child development sample to broaden the PSID policy focus in new and interesting ways. I also include the emerging study of longer term intergenerational patterns of mobility and transfer, including across three generations. Finally, I take up the question of how PSID data and methods could be further improved to make the survey more valuable to public policy, focusing on administrative data linkages.