NCHS stopped producing the Marriage and Divorce files after 1995 due to lack of funds.
Marriage microdata includes variables such as date of marriage, state residency, education, previous marital status, number of marriages, and ages of bride and groom. Divorce microdata include variables such as number or children under 18, custody, month and year of marriage, marriage duration, number of marriages, age, race, and state residency of husband and wife.
Use of this data signifies agreement with NCHS data use rules. Works referring to the datasets or codebooks should contain a citation to NCHS. Published material derived from this data should include a citation such as this at the bottom of the table: "Source: National Center for Health Statistics (span of years used)" |
The published material should also include a disclaimer that credits any analyses, interpretations, or conclusions reached to the author (recipient of the data file) and not to NCHS, which is responsible only for the initial data.
Files ending in ".zip" are compressed with pkzip; file ending in ".Z" are UNIX-compressed Both can be decompressed using winzip. And both can be read by SAS without decompression as shown in the sample sas file. The UNIX command pkunzip and uncompress will also uncompress these 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.
Documentation is available below.
File size: UNIX-compressed data is 16-17 Mb, and the Pkzipped data is 13-14 Mb. The compression ratio is over 90%.
NBER internal users can obtain the data from a UNIX shell at /homes/data/marrdivo ( or marriage or divorce ) or on an NBER PC via Network Neighborhood --> NBER --> home --> data --> marrdivo
Marriage
Year |
Data Files |
Documentation |
Codebook |
SAS code |
|
.Z |
.zip |
||||
1968 | marr68.zip | marr68.pdf |
-- |
||
1969 | mar69.zip | ||||
1970 | marr70.zip | ||||
1971 | marr71.zip | ||||
1972 | marr72.zip | ||||
1973 | marr73.zip | ||||
1974 | marr74.zip | ||||
1975 | marr75.zip | ||||
1976 | marr76.zip | ||||
1977 | marr77.zip | ||||
1978 | marr78.zip | ||||
1979 | marr79.zip | ||||
1980 | marr80.zip | marr80.pdf | |||
1981 | marr81.zip | ||||
1982 | marr82.zip | marr82.pdf | |||
1983 | marr83.zip | marr83.pdf | |||
1984 | marr84.zip | marr84.pdf | |||
1985 | marr85.zip | marr85.pdf | |||
1986 | marr86.zip | marr86.pdf | |||
1987 | marr87.zip | marr87.pdf | |||
1988 | marr88.zip | marr88.pdf | |||
1989 | marr89.zip | marr89.pdf | |||
1990 | marr90.zip | marr90.pdf | |||
1989-1995 | cpmarr.zip | See Below | cpmarr.cbk | cpmarr.sas |
Divorce
Year |
Data Files |
Documentation |
Codebook |
SAS code |
|
.Z |
.zip |
||||
1968 | div68.zip | div68.pdf |
-- |
||
1969 | div69.zip | ||||
1970 | div70.zip | ||||
1971 | div71.zip | ||||
1972 | div72.zip | ||||
1973 | div73.zip | ||||
1974 | div74.zip | ||||
1975 | div75.zip | ||||
1976 | div76.zip | ||||
1977 | div77.zip | ||||
1978 | div78.zip | ||||
1979 | div79.zip | div79.pdf | |||
1980 | div80.zip | div80.pdf | |||
1981 | div81.zip | div81.pdf | |||
1982 | div82.zip | div82.pdf | |||
1983 | div83.zip | div83.pdf | |||
1984 | div84.zip | div84.pdf | |||
1985 | div85.zip | div85.pdf | |||
1986 | div86.zip | div86.pdf | |||
1987 | div87.zip | div87.pdf | |||
1988 | div88.zip | div88.pdf | |||
1989-1995 | cpdivo.zip | See Below | cpdivo.cbk | cpdivo.sas |
1989-1995 Marriage and Divorce Documentation
. | 1989 | 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 |
All Documentation Below, Pkzipped | |||||||
Introduction | |||||||
Marriage File Record Layout | |||||||
Divorce File Record Layout | |||||||
Marriage and Divorce Technical Appendix for 1988 | |||||||
1988 Marriage Table A -- States Reporting Items of Information | |||||||
1988 Marriage Table B -- Sampling Rates & Sample Size | |||||||
1988 Divorce Table A -- States Reporting Items of Information | |||||||
1988 Divorce Table B -- Sampling Rates & Sample Size | |||||||
Marriage Addendum, Tables A & B | m89 | m90 | m91 | m92 | m93 | m94 | m95 |
Divorce Addendum, Tables A & B | d89 | d90 | d91 | d92 | d93 | d94 | d95 |
Contents Report |
E-mail data@nber.org , to report errors.
Last Update: April 19, 2004 |