NBER CPS Supplements
CPS Supplement Files at NBER
This page contains an index to the NBER collection of Census/BLS format micro data
files from the Current Population Survey.
The collection includes many of the most interesting monthly
surveys, but is not intended to be comprehensive. (Basic monthly data
files are also available online.)
A great deal of documentation has yet to be scanned.
Additions and replacements are subject to the needs of the NBER research program.
A housing unit in the CPS is interviewed for four consecutive months and
then dropped out of the sample for the next eight months and is brought
back in the following four months. So, when the system has been in
operation for a full year, 4 of the 8 rotation groups will have been in
the survey for the same month, 1 year ago. See
Technical Paper 63
for more information about Design and Methodology.
The following discussion assumes that you are familiar with
the use of CPS tapes in other environments and deals only with
the NBER specific information. You will certainly have to be
familiar with a serious statistical package or programming
language to make use of these files.
All the CPS data files are ASCII files compressed with the Unix
compress command.
You can decompress them with either the standard Unix uncompress command,
DOS gzip,
or Winzip.
To check your ability to uncompress these files, download the small files
compress.Z or compress.zip.
These files give an example of how to read in .Z and .zip ASCII files into SAS for UNIX
without decompressing the files.
The compressed files are 15-20 Mb, and they expand to about 150-200 Mb.
SAS, SPSS, and Stata programs to read some files
are available.
Netscape Navigator 3 and 4 can corrupt these compressed files; Use Internet Explorer
or refer to the note on the NBER main data page.
To download files in Internet Explorer, right click on them and select "Save Target As...".
If the pdf documents appear to be all blank pages or your screen just blinks, get the latest Acrobat
Reader at www.abobe.com.
All of the data files use MS-DOS line ending conventions. That is,
instead of just a line feed after each line (the Unix convention)
there is a carriage return and a line feed (the DOS convention).
This should not disturb any Unix programs, and makes
the files more accessible to DOS software. It does change the record
length for any program using fixed length records.
Select here for
more information, including a table listing the record length
and the name of any supplements that may be included with the files.
All files use the naming convention:
cpsMMMYY.typ (MMM = month, YY = year)
In order to preserve web access to this data, please be courteous and try not to download
a large fraction of the files over the web.
Loaner CDs are available from Jean Roth jroth@nber.org.
NBER internal users can access the data at /home/data/cps
KEY
= Data files (.raw.Z, .dat.Z)
= PDF Documentation (.pdf)
= DOC or TXT Documentation (.doc, .txt)
= DDF catalogue files (.ddf)
The table is also color coded to indicate the supplement of each entry.
| Annual Demographic File (March) |
Employee Benefit (May 83, 88; Apr 93) |
Fertility and Immigration (June) |
| Health and Benefits (Sep 94) |
Job Training (Jan 91-92) |
Work Schedule |
| Pensions (May 1979) |
Schooling and Computers |
Tobacco Use (Sep 92, Jan 93) |
| Occupational Mobility and Job Tenure |
School Enrollment (Oct 97-98) |
Veteran's (Sep 97) |
| Voting and Registration (Nov 98) |
Computer and Internet Use (Dec 98) |
Volunteer Workers (April 74) |
| Year |
Jan |
Feb |
Mar |
Apr |
May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1962 |
Jan |
Feb |
|
|
Apr |
May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1964 |
Jan |
Feb |
|
Apr |
May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1966 |
Jan |
Feb |
|
Apr |
May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1967 |
Jan |
Feb |
|
Apr |
May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1968 |
Jan |
Feb |
|
|
Apr |
May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1969 |
Jan |
Feb |
|
Apr |
|
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1970 |
Jan |
Feb |
|
Apr |
May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1971 |
Jan |
Feb |
|
Apr |
May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1972 |
Jan |
Feb |
|
Apr |
May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1973 |
Jan |
Feb |
|
|
Apr |
|
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1974 |
Jan |
Feb |
|
|
May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1975 |
Jan |
Feb |
|
Apr |
May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1976 |
Jan |
Feb |
|
Apr |
|
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1977 |
Jan |
Feb |
|
Apr |
|
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
|
Nov |
Dec |
| 1978 |
|
Feb |
|
Apr |
May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
|
Nov |
Dec |
| 1979 |
Jan |
Feb |
|
Apr |
|
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1980 |
Jan |
Feb |
|
Apr |
|
|
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1981 |
Jan |
Feb |
|
Apr |
|
|
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1982 |
Jan |
Feb |
|
Apr |
May |
|
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1983 |
|
Feb |
|
Apr |
|
|
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1984 |
|
Feb |
|
Apr |
|
|
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
|
Nov |
Dec |
| 1985 |
Jan |
Feb |
|
Apr |
|
|
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1986 |
|
Feb |
|
Apr |
|
|
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1987 |
|
Feb |
|
Apr |
|
|
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1988 |
|
Feb |
|
Apr |
|
|
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1989 |
Jan |
Feb |
|
|
Apr |
|
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
|
Nov |
Dec |
| 1990 |
|
|
|
Apr |
May |
|
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
|
Nov |
Dec |
| 1991 |
|
Feb |
|
Apr |
|
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
|
Nov |
Dec |
| 1992 |
|
Feb |
|
Apr |
May |
|
Jul |
Aug |
|
|
Nov |
Dec |
| 1993 |
|
Feb |
|
|
May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
| Nov |
Dec |
| 1994 |
Jan |
|
|
Apr |
May |
|
Jul |
Aug |
|
|
|
Dec |
| 1995 |
|
|
|
Apr |
|
|
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1996 |
Jan |
|
|
Apr |
May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 1997 |
Jan |
|
|
Apr |
|
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
|
|
Nov |
Dec |
| 1998 |
Jan |
|
|
Apr |
May |
|
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
|
|
|
| 1999 |
Jan |
|
|
Apr |
May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
| 2000 |
Jan |
Feb |
|
Apr |
May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
Matched Files
Other CPS data
More CPS data is available at our data page:
To report problems or if you have comments or suggestions, e-mail Jean Roth at jroth@nber.org
^M
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