We have appended Census tract-level contextual data that correspond to the residence of respondents at Baseline and during the 1, 3, 5, 9, and 15-year follow-up waves of the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS). Variables consist of aggregate characteristics on individuals, families, households, and housing units within Census tracts. Contextual data for waves 1-5 correspond to the current residence of the biological mother and biological father at the wave(s) in which they were interviewed. Contextual data for Year 15 correspond to the current residence of the focal child’s primary caregiver (PCG) -- biological mother, biological father, other family, or other non-family caregivers.
Data are available pertaining to tract-level demographics, education, employment, housing, income, and public assistance. For more information, review the Census Tract Measures documentation.
Data are available using 2000 census-tract boundaries for Baseline and Years 1, 3, 5, and 9. Data using the 2010 tract boundaries are available for Year 15.
IMPORTANT NOTE: To protect the privacy of respondents, the actual state, county, and Census tract of residence are not included in the current data appendage. However, it includes pseudo Census tract identifier variables (t*tract). These variables do not represent actual U.S. Census tracts, but are used to indicate which respondents live in the same Census tract. The pseudo Census tract identifiers are consistent between mothers and fathers, and across waves and contextual data appendages for Baseline through Year 9. Tracts in Year 15 use the 2010 Census tract boundary definitions. Since the boundaries of Census tracts changed between the 2000 and 2010 Census, the pseudo identifiers at Year 15 do not match those from the earlier waves. Two variables have been added to the restricted use census tract measures file to account for the different census tract boundaries utilized in 2000 (Baseline and Years 1, 3, 5, and 9) versus in 2010 (Year 15).
Due to the sampling design of the study, there is only a small to moderate amount of respondent clustering within census tracts at any given wave. The following table shows the number of respondents whose residence was determined and the number of unique tracts.
|
Number of respondents |
Number of unique census tracts |
|
|---|---|---|
| Mother | ||
| Baseline | 4725 | 2631 |
| Year 1 | 4261 | 2616 |
| Year 3 | 4078 | 2631 |
| Year 5 | 4095 | 2780 |
| Year 9 | 3539 | 2563 |
| Father | ||
| Baseline | 4069 | 2474 |
| Year 1 | 3614 | 2426 |
| Year 3 | 3268 | 2337 |
| Year 5 | 2988 | 2245 |
| Year 9 | 2625 | 2080 |
| Primary Caregiver | ||
| Year 15 | 3,544 | 2,720 |
If you have additional questions about this data, you can email [email protected]