Survey Estimates of Wealth - Mathematica Policy Research

3. PSID Families
The PSID follows and interviews the members of a sample selected in 1968 and their adult
offspring plus the members of the supplemental sample added in 1997 and their adult offspring.
Data are collected on the sample member and other family members living together at the time of
the interview. Like the SCF, the PSID relies on a concept of economic dependence to determine
which related persons living together constitute a family. Also like the SCF, the PSID includes
unmarried cohabitors as family members and interviews them as spouses when they appear to be
in a “fairly permanent arrangement” (Hill 1992). 10
Because the PSID is a panel study, sample
members who are residing in the same household but not considered part of the same family will
be interviewed as separate families. However, other household members who are neither
members of the panel sample nor members of a panel family (through marriage or the type of
relationship described above) will not be interviewed at all. Thus even the head of a household
containing one or more PSID sample families may not be included in a sample family. PSID
sample families that include the household head correspond closely to SCF primary economic
units. Other PSID families, however, draw their membership from persons who would be
excluded from the SCF primary economic unit and, therefore, left out of most SCF-based
analyses of wealth.
With the addition of a supplemental immigrant sample in 1997, the PSID was restored to
full representativeness of the U.S. household population—a status that the PSID could last claim
in 1968, the survey base year. When weights were constructed, the family weights were poststratified
to a Census Bureau estimate of the total number of U.S. households—100 million—
10 If a PSID sample member is not living with a partner or any relatives, then the PSID family is simply that
individual.
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