WLS Codebooks

Note: Codebooks contain frequency data from the private data release. For some variables, these differ from the frequencies in the public release. Variables that differ between the public and private versions include "(not available on public release)" as part of the variable description, or a note indicating the difference between the public and private versions.

In Person: Assets

JASSETS  Assets Module 

OVERVIEW

The 2010 asset section largely builds on the 2004 asset module.  One major
change is that in this round of interviews asset values were collected together
with the corresponding income.  Thus, the distinction between the asset and
income sections in 2010 is not as clear cut as in previous waves of the WLS. 
For example, rental and interest income information was collected here, while
the account balance of retirement plans was asked in the income and pensions
section. Questions about the impact of the financial crisis of 2008 on asset
values constitute the second major addition to the section.  They were asked
for several asset categories of a 50% random subsample.  Also new in this round
are questions on credit card use and credit card debt.

The section begins with questions on the value of real estate, businesses and
vehicles, the associated mortgages or loans and the rental income from these
properties.  This is followed by questions on credit cards and other debts.

Next come financial investments, split in four categories:
checking/savings/money market funds, CD's/government savings bonds/treasury
bills, stocks/bonds/mutual funds, and other assets. 

Life insurance policy questions including face/cash value questions proceeded
questions about other assets. While in 2004 only respondents in the
nonnormative parenting sample were asked to name life insurance beneficiaries,
in this round this information was collected from all participants. 

Unfolding brackets followed questions asking for dollar amounts in this
section. Associated with these items are four variables (identified by the
eight characters of the variable name) detailing the collected information in
the bracketing sequence.  The character "b" is associated with a summary
variable, "u" and "l" denote the upper and lower bounds and "e" indicates the
entry point into the bracketing sequence.  Upper bound of infinity is denoted
by a special missing code - ".i" in Stata, "I" in SAS and system missing in
ASCII datasets.

Data for the 2011 collection wave were primarily compiled from in-person (CAPI)
and - more rarely - telephone (CATI) interviews, as well as from
self-administered questionnaires that participants were asked to complete and
mail back after being interviewed. Sometimes participants who were unwilling to
be interviewed in-person or by telephone indicated they would be willing to
return a self-administered questionnaire (SAQ). Thus we created a special
version of the SAQ and mailed it to participants who did not complete an
in-person or telephone interview: the "mail-only self-administered
questionnaire" (MOSAQ). In addition to replicating all content in the original
2011 SAQ, the MOSAQ also contained questions analogous to those asked in
selected CAPI modules: Marriage, Cohab, and Dating; Children; Health;
Employment; Income and Pensions; and Assets. Since MOSAQ data contributed to
THIS module, users should pay special attention to analysis variable values of
-29 and -30. Values of -29 (left blank on MOSAQ) mean that the information
contained within a CAPI variable was asked of but not answered by a MOSAQ
participant while values of -30 (not part of MOSAQ) mean that comparable
information was not asked of MOSAQ cases.

During the interview, interviewers had a chance to leave notes with additional
information obtained from the respondents.  The WLS staff reviewed and
processed these notes using a standardized set of decision rules for each
section.In many cases processing the notes resulted in changes to the coded
responses which created inconsistencies in the skip pattern of the CASES
instrument. While we put considerable effort into adjusting such discrepancies,
we could not eliminate them all. Occasionally, notes indicated problematic
cases due to the lack of specific information or, conversely, cases that
contained extra information that was important enough to retain. In such
instances we created a flag, identified by the character "f" and attached it to
the variable name, for the affected variable. 

BRIEF VARIABLE DESCRIPTION

    HASSSTAT-HASSREL:  		Module-level status variables

    HR021RP-HR035RP:            Real Estate and Vehicles - Value and 
                                Corresponding Loans

    HR040RP-HR037RP:		Credit Cards and Other Debt

    HR062RP-HR069RP:            Financial Assets - Bank
                                Accounts, Investments, Etc.

    HR080RE-HR085SP:            Respondent's and Spouse's Life Insurance
    
    HR2* series:		Income from Owned Assets
    
    HR3* series:		Impact of Financial Crisis of 2008    

    HR100RPC-HR101RPC:          Net Worth