Internet Interviewing and the HRS

Rand Corporation, Santa Monica CA

Investigators

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Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The United States is experiencing its greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Households have been affected in a number of ways. However, the major surveys of socio-economic trends are not fielded frequently enough to track these effects. To monitor these effects, which are important in themselves and which provide a valuable opportunity to learn about household responses to shocks, NIA has funded a series of Internet surveys conducted through the RAND American Life Panel, a nationally representative sample of approximately 2500 persons who are surveyed every month about various topics. This revision application would extend these high-frequency surveys, which began in November 2008, for three years. This time period should permit coverage of the full term of the crisis and at least some of the post-crisis recovery. In particular, the project adds measurably to knowledge of the extent to which households change their spending patterns in response to financial shocks such as unemployment or stock market losses. By providing data that quantify such responses, this project will help researchers analyzing the course of lifetime wealth accumulation that bears on adequacy of household resources after retirement, as well as the direct effects of crises such as the current one on the ability of retired persons to support the lifestyle they have saved for. Another focus of the data to be collected is on people's expectations about the health of the economy and their own financial well- being and how those expectations change and precipitate actions in response to the evolving crisis. These data will support researchers working to understand how closely expectations match reality and whether expectations about stock prices, for example, lead to sell-off (or purchase) of stock assets. Health is a third focus. Associations between health and socioeconomic status have been well established, but which is the cause and which the effect? This project's high-frequency surveys include health indicators that will help researchers determine whether there is a connection between economic shocks and health. Specifically, funds committed to this project allow extending the data collection mentioned above;monitoring the data for quality and making adjustments to the survey instrument if necessary;producing timely, descriptive data summary reports;producing user-friendly files and making the data available to the research community. The data would provide the basis for recommending to the Health and Retirement Study-the principal survey of older Americans-whether it would be worth instituting similar high-frequency data collection involving a subset of HRS respondents. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The financial crisis has threatened the economic position of the older population and the ability of the middle- aged to secure a comfortable retirement. Constrained resources could adversely affect the ability of the elderly to live healthy lives, and the uncertainty attending the crisis could be psychologically stressful. The data generated by this project will allow researchers to explore the connections between economic shocks and the financial, physical, and psychological well-being of households.