Transition into Adulthood Supplement

An Introduction to the TAS

Over the past several decades, the U.S. and other countries have seen a lengthening of the period between childhood and adulthood—the “transition into adulthood.” Youth no longer move quickly from secondary education into the labor force and independent economic living. Based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), less than 50% of individuals will form their own independent family unit before they reach their mid-20s.

Scientists are becoming increasingly aware that the period between the ages of 18 and 28 years are critical for life span development. It is during this period that major investments are made in education, crucial decisions are made regarding partnering and childbearing, and careers are planned and initiated. For PSID, this means that important educational and occupational transitions are often made while young adults are still dependent on their parents and are not primary respondents themselves.

The “Transition into Adulthood Supplement” (TAS) is part of PSID and may include individuals from the PSID Child Development Supplement (CDS). Although PSID collects some information about everyone who is a co-resident member of each family in the study, considerably more information is collected on the Reference Person and Spouse Partner (R-S/P). The TAS is intended to fill in the gap of time and information collected about youth experiences and the first interview as a PSID R-S/P.

The launching of TAS in 2005 was motivated by recognition that these years are marked by choices, changes, and transitions that have profound life-long consequences, but would be missed by the sample design of the PSID prior to 2005. To bridge this gap, TAS was initially tied to the Original CDS cohort, which began with children ages 0-12 in 1997, and was launched in 2005 when the oldest members of the Original CDS cohort reached 18 to 20 years of age. TAS has subsequently been conducted in 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013, and 2015. By the 2015 wave of TAS, all members of the Original CDS had reached adulthood and were eligible for at least one wave of TAS. In 2017, TAS was relaunched to capture information on the transition into adulthood of all young adults in the PSID, not just those who participated in the Original CDS.

Based on current literature and theories guiding research on the adult transitional years, the TAS interview builds on the information collected from some of these young adults when they themselves were interviewed as children and adolescents in the CDS, and, at the same time, harmonized and coordinated with data to be collected on them when they are interviewed as adults in future waves of Core PSID.

The Panel Study of Income Dynamics is a longitudinal survey of a nationally-representative sample of U.S. families. Since 1968, PSID has collected data on family composition changes, housing and food expenditures, marriage and fertility histories, employment, income, wealth, time spent in housework, health, expenditures, philanthropy, and more. Over 100,000 people have ever participated in the panel, which includes up to seven generations within a family. PSID is the longest running panel on family dynamics, and is considered one of the most important data archives in the world. The PSID now is conducted biennially, primarily via telephone with data collection commencing in March and ending by December of odd-numbered years.

In 1997, PSID supplemented its main survey with collection of additional data on a cohort of 0-12 year- old children in the study and their parents. The objective of this supplement—the Original Child Development Supplement—was to provide researchers with comprehensive, nationally representative, and longitudinal data on children and their families with which to study the dynamic process of early human capital formation. Two additional waves of the Original CDS were conducted in 2002-2003 (CDS-II), when the children were 5-17 years of age, and in 2007-2008 (CDS-III) for children in the cohort who were under 18 years of age.

Within the context of family, neighborhood, and school environments, CDS gathered information about a broad array of developmental outcomes including (but not limited to) physical health, emotional well-being, cognitive skills, education achievement, and social relationships with family and peers. Each Original CDS child could have up to eight modules of data collected from three different family members (primary and secondary caregivers and the target child) and a school information source (teacher and/or school administrative data).

The Ongoing Child Development Supplement collects data on children’s health, development, and well-being within the children’s family and neighborhood context. In 2014, CDS was relaunched to collect data from all children in PSID households aged 0–17 years. Detailed information is collected on the same topics as in the Original CDS, including time diaries, assessments of reading and math skills, interviews with children’s primary caregivers and direct interviews with older children themselves. Because the CDS is a supplement to the PSID, an extensive amount of family demographic and economic data about the CDS child’s family is collected in PSID, providing more extensive family data than any other nationally-representative longitudinal survey of children and youth in the U.S.

Bridging the Gap Through the Original and Ongoing CDS, detailed information has been collected on participants during their childhood and adolescence. CDS youth will eventually become the future “active panel” of Core PSID when they move out of (or “split-off”) from their parents’ home and establish an independent household of their own. Under the current design of the TAS, CDS young adults will participate in TAS data collection until they reach age 28, regardless of whether they have become members of Core PSID. When they join Core PSID, they will participate in that study every other year from that point forward.

The Transition into Adulthood Supplement thus serves as a “bridge of information” between the rich data collected in the CDS on the years between birth and age 18 years, and the rich data collected in the PSID on the years after economic independence is established.