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.

Phone: Assets

For more information on the Assets Module see Appendix L - Cor933. 


OVERVIEW

A full range of asset categories was asked of graduate spouses only in the case
when the graduate respondent indicated that the spouse is more knowlegable
about finances (GR086RE).  On top of that, a random 10 percent sample of
spouses was asked the value of their home. Compared to the graduate interview,
fewer asset questions were asked of spouses.  The value of vehicles, debts and
life insurance policies was not collected.  Also, many of the graduate asset
categories were collapsed into a single question.  However, this was done in
such a way that it is possible to recreate these variables from the graduate
data.   

As in the graduate interview, 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.

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 OVERVIEW

AR001RP-AR004RPC        Home ownership and value (10 percent random sample)

AR005RP-AR016RPC        Real estate ownership and value 

AR017RP-GR021RP         Financial assets: retirement savings, bank accounts, 
                        investments, etc.

AR025RPC                Net worth

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