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Description & Citation--Study No. 6258

Bibliographic Description

ICPSR Study No.:6258
 
Persistent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR06258
 
Title:Urban Poverty and Family Life Survey of Chicago, 1987
 
Principal Investigator(s):William Julius Wilson et al.
 
Funding Agency:Carnegie Corporation
 
  Chicago Community Trust
 
  Ford Foundation
 
  Institute for Research on Poverty
 
  Joyce Foundation
 
  Lloyd A. Fry Foundation
 
  MacArthur Foundation
 
  Rockefeller Foundation
 
  Spencer Foundation
 
  United States Department of Health and Human Services
 
  William T. Grant Foundation
 
  Woods Charitable Fund
 
Bibliographic Citation:Wilson, William Julius, et al. Urban Poverty and Family Life Survey of Chicago, 1987 [Computer file]. ICPSR06258-v2. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 1997. doi:10.3886/ICPSR06258
 

Scope of Study

Summary:This survey was undertaken to assemble a broad range of family, household, employment, schooling, and welfare data on families living in urban poverty areas of Chicago. The researchers were seeking to test a variety of theories about urban poverty. Questions concerned respondents' current lives as well as their recall of life events from birth to age 21. Major areas of investigation included household composition, family background, education, time spent in detention or jail, childbirth, fertility, relationship history, current employment, employment history, military service, participation in informal economy, child care, child support, child-rearing, neighborhood and housing characteristics, social networks, current health, current and past public aid use, current income, and major life events.
 
Subject Term(s):child care, child rearing, criminal histories, education, employment, families, family life, health status, household composition, income, military service, neighborhood characteristics, poverty, social networks, urban areas, welfare services
 
Geographic Coverage:Chicago, Illinois, United States
 
Time Period:1987
 
Date(s) of Collection:February 21, 1987 - October 24, 1987
 
Universe:Non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic Blacks, and persons of Mexican or Puerto Rican ethnicity, aged 18-44, residing in 1986 in Chicago census tracts with 20 percent or more persons living under the poverty line.
 
Data Type:survey data
 
Data Collection Notes:Value labels for this study are being released in a separate file, Part 7, to assist users of SPSS Release 6.1 for Windows. The syntax window in this version of SPSS will read a maximum of 32,767 lines. If all value labels were included in the SPSS data definition file, the number of lines in the file would exceed 32,767 lines.
 
  All references to card-image data in the codebook are no longer applicable.
 
  During generation of the logical record length data file, ICPSR optimized variable widths to the width of the widest value appearing in the data collection for each variable. However, the principal investigator's user-missing data code definitions were retained even when a variable contained no missing data. As a result, when user-missing data values are defined (e.g., by uncommenting the MISSING VALUES section in the SPSS data definition statements) and exceed the optimized variable width, SPSS's display dictionary output will contain asterisks for the missing data codes.
 
  Producer: University of Chicago, Center for the Study of urban Inequality, and the National Opinion Research Center (NORC).
 

Methodology

Sample:Multistage stratified probability sample design yielding 2,490 observations (1,183 Blacks, 364 whites, 489 Mexican-origin persons, and 454 Puerto Rican-origin persons). Though Black respondents include parents (N = 1,020) and non-parents (N = 163), only parents were selected within non-Black groups. Response rates ranged from 73.8 percent for non-Hispanic whites to 82.5 percent for Black parents.
 
Data Source:personal interviews
 

Access and Availability

Note:A list of the data formats available for this study can be found in the summary of holdings. Detailed file-level information (such as record length, case count, and variable count) is listed in the file manifest.
 
Original ICPSR Release:1994-10-19
 
Version History:The last update of this study occurred on 1997-11-04.
 
  1997-11-04 - The documentation and frequencies are being released as PDF files, and an SPSS export file is now available. Also, the SAS data definition statements and SPSS data definition statements have been reissued with minor changes, and SPSS value labels are being released in Part 7 due to SPSS for Windows limitations.
 
Dataset(s):
  • DS1: Raw Data File
  • DS2: SPSS Export File
  • DS3: SAS Data Definition Statements
  • DS4: Frequencies, Sections A-G (PDF)
  • DS5: Frequencies, Sections H-O (PDF)
  • DS6: Frequencies, Sections P-Y (PDF)
  • DS7: SPSS Value Labels
 

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