Working Trajectories in the HRS

This document describes a longitudinal data set of working trajectories based on the U.S. Health and Retirement Study (HRS), waves 1992 to 2014, and AHEAD 1995. For each respondent the data set contains the working history recorded to the nearest month, using the detailed self-reported information on worklife trajectories included in the HRS.

The data set is based on the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), waves 1992 to 2014, and AHEAD 1995. It contains information on job histories of 38,183 individuals during the period from 1992 to 2015 and is provided in long format: Each row of the data set corresponds to the labor force status of one individual in a given month and year. Individuals are identified using the household identifier HHID and the person identifier PN. These variables can also be used to merge the working trajectories data to all other parts of the HRS. Time is captured by the variables year and month.

Contributed projects based on HRS public data are provided by researchers who want to share their work with the research community. Researchers interested in contributing their own products are invited to contact us at hrsquestions@umich.edu. HRS does not produce or support these products and is not responsible for their content or use. They are provided here as a service to the research community.