Longitudinal Studies
Wisconsin Longitudinal Study
The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) is a long-term study of a random sample of 10,317 men and women who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957.
Midlife in the United States
Conducted in 1995/96, MIDUS, is an investigation of the role of behavioral, psychological, and social factors in age-related variation in health and well-being in the US.
National Survey of Families and Households
The NSFH was designed to provide a broad range of information on family life to serve as a resource for research across disciplinary perspectives. A considerable amount of life-history information was collected, including: the respondent's family living arrangements in childhood, departures and returns to the parental home, and histories of marriage, cohabitation, education, fertility, and employment.
Wisconsin Assets and Incomes Studies
WAIS merges data on a random sample of individuals who filed taxes in the State of Wisconsin between 1959 and 1964 with data from a number of administrative sources including the Social Security Administration and probate data.
Latin American Mortality Database
The Latin American Mortality Database (LAMBdA) supports the study of mortality trends in Latin American countries from 1848 to 2014.
Health, Wellbeing and Aging in Latin American and the Caribbean
SABE is a cross-national survey on health and aging organized as a cooperative venture among researchers in Argentina, Barbados, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Mexico and Uruguay. SABE has produced the first cross-national database for studying health and aging in these countries.
Puerto Rican Elderly: Health Conditions
PREHCO provides quality data for researchers and policy makers about issues affecting the elderly population in Puerto Rico: health status, housing arrangements, functional status, transfers, labor history, migration, income, childhood characteristics, health insurance, use of health services, marital history, mistreat, sexuality, etc.
High School & Beyond
High School and Beyond (HSB) is a panel study of a nationally representative sample of ~15,000 sophomores and ~12,000 seniors attending high schools in the United States in 1980. Resurveyed periodically since that time (most recently in 2021), the data include measures of social background, educational opportunities and achievements (including test scores and transcripts), labor market outcomes, family, and health (including saliva- and blood-based biomarkers in the 2021 data collection). The 2021 data are expected to be released in early 2023. In March 2022, researchers published "Cohort Profile: High School and Beyond."
Data Resources
Better Access to Data for Global Interdisciplinary Research (BADGIR)
BADGIR is an on-line data archive at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. The archive is a cooperative venture organized by the Center for Demography of Health and Aging (CDHA) with contributions from the Center for Demography and Ecology (CDE) and the Data and Information Services Center (DISC). You can create a BADGIR account by filling out this registration form.
Data and Information Services Center
DISC provides quantitative, numeric microdata for researchers and students conducting secondary analysis in the social sciences.
DISC services include reference, data acquisition, cataloging and classification of datasets, aid in acquiring restricted data sets, preservation of data, making public use data available via value added data extraction systems, data current awareness services, and campus outreach services to promote the use of social science data to the larger campus community.
DISC maintains one of the world's finest research collections of machine-readable data files in demography. The collection is strongest in U.S. census data and large household surveys; fertility, vital statistics, life history, and social mobility surveys. Researchers also have web access to U.S. and international population data, microdata files, longitudinal studies, vital statistics, health, and macro-economic data.