I begin with a brief history of the Panel Study
of Income Dynamics (PSID) and its brilliant founding father, noting
its nearly disastrous initial design, nearly fatal funding cutoffs
when Nixon put the Office of Economic Opportunity out of business,
and then when Reagan chopped the NSF social science budget in
half, and paying honor to its exceptionally talented, long-lived
and unsung staff.
Since it is impossible to cover all of the lessons
learned from the PSID, I concentrate on what is of greatest interest
to me: the surprising degree of economic mobility in the U.S.
— both within and between generations, with its attendant
implications for understanding the nature and developmental consequences
of life cycle processes in general, and poverty and welfare dynamics
in particular.
As of four years ago, when I left the PSID and Michigan
for Northwestern, I had spent half my life working on the PSID.
Not surprisingly, my PSID phase has had a profound effect on my
life. The recognition that economic fortunes bob around on a sea
of demographic change led to my interest in determinants and sequelae
of family composition changes. The heterogeneous nature of poverty
and welfare receipt — frequently transitory but a worriesome
amount persistent — stimulated my interest in understanding
their consequences for children's development. Pursuing these
interests has led to many interdisciplinary collaborations, a
chance meeting at an airport 17 years ago with the woman who is
now my wife and, in 1995, a change of jobs and disciplinary affiliation.
Greg J. Duncan, School
of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University
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