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: Intertransfers

JIT - Intertransfers Module

OVERVIEW

The 2010 intertransfers section covers the same concepts as the 2004
interviews, but it was revised to allow for greater flexibility in reporting
gifts. Whereas in 2004 we asked in turn about transfers to and from parents,
children, and anyone else, in this round we collected infromation on up to
three largest transfers received and ten largest transfers given, ascertaining
the respondent's relationship to the person every time.  Unlike in 2004, where
children and siblings were referenced by birth order, in the current wave they
are identified by their position in the child and siblings rosters.  Questions
on inheritances are no longer sampled, but they only cover inheritances
received since last interview.  

The section begins with questions on two largest inheritances valued at $10,000
or more that were received since last interview.  Basic information such as the
value, date and relationship to the deceased was collected of everyone.  If the
inheritance came from a parent, respondents were additionally asked which, if
any, of the siblings received more and for what reason.  

Next come three rounds of questions on gifts received.  For each gift, details
such as the amount, relationship to the benefactor, purpose for the gift and
time frame over which it was received were recorded.  For transfers to and from
grandchildren we ascertained information on which of the respondent's own
children was that child's parent.  It is worth mentioning that inheritances
worth less than $10,000 are often reported here. 

This is followed by ten rounds of questions on gifts or loans given.  Much like
for gifts received, the amount, relationship to the recipient, period of giving
and purpose were obtained.  Additionally, respondents stated whether it was a
gift or a loan and were asked for the largest transfer whether the recipient
could have borrowed that much elsewhere.  If any of the gifts were made to
children, we confirmed whether the gifts were divided equally. Finally,
respondents with more than one child were asked about the intended distribution
of inter vivos transfers among their children. 

The section concludes with questions on charitable contributions over the past
year. 

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 information collected 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.  

Unfortunately, due to instrument error some of the bracketing questions in this
section were wrongly asked on PER YEAR basis. For example, the question read
"Would it amount to less than $25,000 or more than $25,000 PER YEAR?" instead
of "Would it amount to less than $25,000 or more than $25,000?" The bracketing
outcomes for the affected items were mixed, largely depending on the
interviewer's handling of the problem.  In some cases the interviewers caught
the mistake and did not read the PER YEAR part. In others respondents became
confused by the PER YEAR framing, yielding unusable data.  The WLS staff
listened to the affected interviews and wiped out or corrected the bracketing
information when necessary.     

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 DESCRIPTIONS

HITSTAT-HITREL:   Module-level status variables

HQ100RP-HQ130RP:  Inheritances received since last interview; division of 
                  inheritance among siblings

HQ200RP-HQ239RP:  Gifts or loans received by the respondent/spouse/partner

HQ400RP-HQ409RP:  Gifts or loans given by the respondent/spouse/partner; 
                  division of financial help among children

HQ700RP-HQ701RP:  Charitable contributions