In this article I define the main criteria that ought to be considered in evaluating the costs and benefits of various data resources that might be used for a new study of social and economic mobility in the United States. These criteria include population definition and coverage, sample size, topical coverage, temporal issues, spatial issues, sustainability, financial expense, and privacy and data access. I use these criteria to evaluate the strengths and weakness of several possible data resources for a new study of mobility, including existing smaller-scale surveys, the Current Population Survey, the American Community Survey, linked administrative data, and a new stand-alone survey. No option is perfect, and all involve trade-offs. I conclude by recommending five possible designs that are particularly strong on the criteria listed above.

Although grade retention may be consequential for a number of important educational and socioeconomic outcomes, we know surprisingly little about the actual rate at which students are made to repeat grades. We build on Hauser, Frederick, and Andrew's (2007) measure of grade retention using data from the 1995 through 2010 Current Population Surveys. We make technical improvements to their measure; provide more recent estimates; and validate the measure against external criteria. Our measure describes large disparities in grade retention rates by sex, race/ethnicity, geographic locale, and students' socioeconomic circumstances. However, both absolute retention rates and disparities in retention rates have declined markedly since 2005. We conclude by describing how our measures might be used to model the impact of economic and policy contexts on grade retention rates.

Data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) are rarely analyzed in a way that takes advantage of the CPS's longitudinal design. This is mainly because of the technical difficulties associated with linking CPS files across months. In this paper, we describe the method we are using to create unique identifiers for all CPS person and household records from 1989 onward. These identifiers-available along with CPS basic and supplemental data as part of the on-line Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS)-make it dramatically easier to use CPS data for longitudinal research across any number of substantive domains. To facilitate the use of these new longitudinal IPUMS-CPS data, we also outline seven different ways that researchers may choose to link CPS person records across months, and we describe the sample sizes and sample retention rates associated with these seven designs. Finally, we discuss a number of unique methodological challenges that researchers will confront when analyzing data from linked CPS files.

We describe a method for producing annual estimates of the unauthorized immigrant population in the United Sates and components of population change, for each state and D.C., for 1990 to 2010. We quantify a sharp drop in the number of unauthorized immigrants arriving since 2000, and we demonstrate the role of departures from the population (emigration, adjustment to legal status, removal by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and deaths) in reducing population growth from one million in 2000 to population losses in 2008 and 2009. The number arriving in the U.S. peaked at more than one million in 1999 to 2001, and then declined rapidly through 2009. We provide evidence that population growth stopped after 2007 primarily because entries declined and not because emigration increased during the economic crisis. Our estimates of the total unauthorized immigrant population in the U.S. and in the top ten states are comparable to those produced by DHS and the Pew Hispanic Center. For the remaining states and D.C., our data and methods produce estimates with smaller ranges of sampling error.

Are college degrees earned abroad worth less in the American economy than degrees earned in the United States? Do the labor market penalties associated with holding a foreign degree vary as a function of the country or region in which it was earned? Do these processes differ for men and women? We use data on 18,361 college-educated immigrants from the National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG) to address these questions. Female immigrants with foreign degrees are less likely to be employed than immigrant women who earned their degrees in the US. When employed, both female and male immigrants with foreign degrees are less likely to work in a job related to their highest college degree. Among employed female immigrants, the wage returns to foreign degrees are about 17% less than for US degrees; among male immigrants, this figure is about 11%. For both female and male immigrants, the labor market penalties associated with holding a foreign degree vary as a function of the region from which the foreign degree was obtained.

We use family fixed-effects models to estimate the impact of childhood health on adult literacy, labor force outcomes, and marital status among pairs of white brothers observed as children in the 1880 U.S. Census and then as adults in the 1900-1930 Censuses. Given our focus on the 19th century, we observed a wider array of infectious, chronic, and traumatic health problems than is observed using data that are more recent; our results thus provide some insights into circumstances in modern developing countries where similar health problems are more frequently observed. Compared to their healthy siblings, sick brothers were less likely to be located (and thus more likely to be dead) 20-50 years after their 1880 enumeration. Sick brothers were also less likely to be literate, to have ever been married, and to have reported an occupation. However, among those with occupations, sick and healthy brothers tended to do similar kinds of work. We discuss the implications of our results for research on the impact of childhood health on socioeconomic outcomes in developed and developing countries.

How many students repeat a grade each year? How do retention rates vary across states and over time? Despite extensive research on the predictors and consequences of grade retention, there is no systematic way to quantify state-level retention rates; even national estimates rely on imperfect proxy measures. We present a conceptually simple method-based on publicly available data that are routinely collected each year-that describes retention rates at the state and national levels. After describing and validating this method, we employ it to report first through eighth grade public school retention rates for 2002-003 through 2008-09 for the entire country and for each state.

Does participating in a longitudinal survey affect respondents' answers to subsequent questions about their labor force characteristics? In this article, we investigate the magnitude of panel conditioning or time-in-survey biases for key labor force questions in the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS). Using linked CPS records for household heads first interviewed between January 2007 and June 2010, our analyses are based on strategic within-person comparisons across survey months and between-person comparisons across CPS rotation groups. We find considerable evidence for panel conditioning effects in the CPS. Panel conditioning downwardly biases the CPS-based unemployment rate, mainly by leading people to remove themselves from its denominator. Across surveys, CPS respondents (claim to) leave the labor force in greater numbers than otherwise equivalent respondents who are participating in the CPS for the first time. The results cannot be attributed to panel attrition or mode effects. We discuss implications for CPS-based research and policy as well as for survey methodology more broadly.

In this paper, we evaluate relationships between mid-life work experiences and the realization of preferences for full-time employment, part-time employment, and complete retirement at age 63-64. Using rich data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, we demonstrate that the likelihood of achieving one's preferred employment status is related to earlier work experiences including employment stability in mid-life and self-employment, part-time employment, and private pension coverage across the life course. Despite large gender differences in work experiences across the life course, relationships between earlier work experiences and the likelihood of realizing later-life employment preferences are generally similar for men and women. We also find that these relationships are only partially mediated by economic and employment circumstances in late mid-life, suggesting the need for further evaluation of the cumulative pathways linking mid-life work experiences to the realization of later-life employment preferences.

This research investigates the merits of the "social causation" and "health selection" explanations for associations between socioeconomic status and self-reported overall health, musculoskeletal health and depression. Using data that include information about individuals' SES and health from childhood through late adulthood, I employ structural equation models that account for errors in measured variables and that allow for explicit tests of various hypotheses about how SES and health are related. For each outcome and for both women and men the results provide no support for the health selection hypothesis. SES affects each health outcome at multiple points in the life course, but the reverse is not true.

We model the relationships between socioeconomic status (SES), the conditions of paid employment, and changes between ages 54 and 65 in a variety of health outcomes: self-reported overall health, musculoskeletal health, and depression. To what extent is SES associated with changes in these health outcomes net of the conditions of paid employment? At the same time, to what extent are the conditions of paid employment independently associated with these outcomes net of SES? To address these questions we use unique data collected from a single cohort of men and women to model changes in these health outcomes between ages 54 and 65. Although results vary across outcomes, it is clear that there are some circumstances in which associations between SES and changes in health can be (at least partly) attributed to working conditions, and that there are other circumstances in which associations between working conditions and changes in health can be (at least partly) attributed to SES. We conclude that the largely disconnected literatures on health disparities (in the social sciences and public health) and job design (in occupational stress and ergonomics) could and should be fruitfully connected.

Since the late 1970s, an increasing number of states have required students to pass statewide high school exit examinations (HSEEs) in order to graduate. States have usually adopted HSEEs in response to the perception that a substantial number of graduates lack skills that are required for success in the modern economy. What do these educational reforms mean for students' postsecondary economic and labor market prospects? The central hypothesis of the study presented here was that state HSEE policies have the effect of widening gaps in labor force status and earnings between young people who have high school diplomas and those who do not. To test this hypothesis, the authors modeled the association between state HSEE policies and these labor market outcomes using data from the 1980-2000 U.S. censuses and the 1984-2002 Outgoing Rotation Groups of the Current Population Survey. The results revealed no evidence that state HSEEs positively affect labor force status or earnings or that the connections between state HSEE policies and these outcomes vary by students' race/ethnicity or the level of difficulty of state HSEEs.