Abstract:
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The Survey of Program Dynamics (SPD) is a longitudinal, demographic survey which grew out of the 1996 legislation reforming the national welfare system. That legislation directed the Census Bureau to collect data, paying particular attention to issues of out-of-wedlock births, welfare dependency, spells of welfare and their causes, and the status of children. SPD data allows researchers to address these questions and many more. While providing unique opportunities to researchers, the SPD offers a significant number of challenges in the longitudinal use of the survey data, including those inherent with using three different collection vehicles over the life of the survey, the lack of continuous annual data over the ten-year survey period, high levels of attrition, and the use of topical module data with core SPD data. This paper focuses on these challenges and offers suggestions on how they can be overcome. It also provides an introduction to the three contributed papers in this session, which present real life examples of using SPD data.
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