NBER's CPS May Extracts


NBER's CPS May Extracts -- 1969-1987


 

This page contains the NBER collection of Current Population Survey (CPS) May Extracts. The CPS May Files are a (relatively) uniform subset of 200 variables from the Current Population Survey May Supplement files. From 1969-1978, usual weekly hours and earnings and union coverage were asked only in May. From 1979 on, these questions were asked during the respondent's outgoing rotations, the fourth and eighth month that a household is interviewed. See the Merged Outgoing Rotation Groups for 1979- extract information.

Matching information and Stata .do files from NBER Working Paper t0247 by B. Madrian and L. J. Lefgren are available for March-to-March matches and can be modified for use in other matches. Technical Paper 63 contains more information about Design and Methodology.

The data files are available as Stata *.dta files, uncompressed, UNIX-compressed, or pkzipped. Conversion software such as Stat/Transfer can be used to convert the Stata files to other formats. Stata users can use 'copy "/data/cps_may.html/cpsmay69.dta" cpsmay69.dta' to copy the files to their current directory.

File size: Uncompressed files are 25-30 Mb; .Z files are 5-6 Mb; and .zip files are 4-5 Mb.

Both ".Z" and ".zip" files can be uncompressed with winzip. In addition, ".Z" files can be uncompressed using the UNIX uncompress command and ".zip" files can be unzipped with uncompression software. To check ability to uncompress these files, download the small files compress.Z or compress.zip. These files give an example of how to read .Z and .zip ASCII files into SAS for UNIX without decompressing the files.

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, get the latest Acrobat Reader at www.abobe.com.

Internal users can obtain the data from a UNIX shell at /homes/data/cps-may or on an NBER PC via Network Neighborhood --> NBER --> home --> data --> cps-may

Updates and changes.

CPS May Extract Documentation

The CPS May Extract Documentation is cpsmay.txt. The documentation for the data that the extract was created from is available below.

Variable Labels for x1-x200

SAS SPSS Stata

State Crosswalk

Thanks to Mireille Jacobson for providing a crosswalk for the different state codes.

statid.txt has a correspondence between the x7 from 1977 on and x9. It is an empirical tab taken from the 1977 data (which has both state id variables).

1969-1972 1973-1976 1977-1987 statid.txt

DATA

Stata .dta UNIX-Compressed .dta Pkzipped .dta Original BLS/Census or ICPSR Documentation
1969 cpsmay69.dta cpsmay69.dta.Z cpsmay69.zip CPS, May 1969
1970 cpsmay70.dta cpsmay70.dta.Z cpsmay70.zip CPS, May 1970
1971 cpsmay71.dta cpsmay71.dta.Z cpsmay71.zip CPS, May 1971
1972 cpsmay72.dta cpsmay72.dta.Z cpsmay72.zip CPS, May 1972
1973 cpsmay73.dta cpsmay73.dta.Z cpsmay73.zip CPS May 1973
1974 cpsmay74.dta cpsmay74.dta.Z cpsmay74.zip CPS, May 1974
1975 cpsmay75.dta cpsmay75.dta.Z cpsmay75.zip CPS, May 1975
1976 cpsmay76.dta cpsmay76.dta.Z cpsmay76.zip cpsmay76.pdf
1977 cpsmay77.dta cpsmay77.dta.Z cpsmay77.zip cpsmay77.pdf
1978 cpsmay78.dta cpsmay78.dta.Z cpsmay78.zip cpsmay78.txt
1979 cpsmay79.dta cpsmay79.dta.Z cpsmay79.zip cpsmay79.pdf
1980 cpsmay80.dta cpsmay80.dta.Z cpsmay80.zip cpsmay80.pdf
1981 cpsmay81.dta cpsmay81.dta.Z cpsmay81.zip cpsmay81.pdf
1982 cpsmay82.dta cpsmay82.dta.Z cpsmay82.zip bas82.pdf
1983 cpsmay83.dta cpsmay83.dta.Z cpsmay83.zip cpsmay83.pdf
1984 cpsmay84.dta cpsmay84.dta.Z cpsmay84.zip cpsmay84.pdf
1985 cpsmay85.dta cpsmay85.dta.Z cpsmay85.zip cpsmay85.pdf
1986 cpsmay86.dta cpsmay86.dta.Z cpsmay86.zip bas86.pdf
1987 cpsmay87.dta cpsmay87.dta.Z cpsmay87.zip

Contact data@nber.org with questions, comments, or suggestions.

Last Update: March 12, 2003 Created by Jean Roth December 10, 2000