PROJECT SUMMARY
Some of the most important unanswered questions in health and aging relate to the influence of early life
and intergenerational factors. But documenting the role of these factors is limited by the dearth of longitudinal,
intergenerational microdata containing health information. Our broad research objective is to build an
unparalleled public resource to study the longitudinal and intergenerational determinants of health and aging,
containing unprecedented sample sizes for understudied populations such as minorities and women.
We propose to enhance and expand the Longitudinal Intergenerational Family Electronic Micro-
dataset (LIFE-M), which integrates millions of birth, marriage, and death records with decennial censuses over
four generations from the late 19th to the 20th century. Our specific aims are to:
(1) Expand LIFE-M's geographic coverage by linking vital records for seven additional states, so that the covered
states represent 28% of the U.S. population in 1940, including 28% of both the Black and White populations.
(2) Enhance LIFE-M by adding non-vital records, including (a) the Social Security Death Index and Numerical
Identification Files, (b) the 1930 and 1950 Censuses, and (c) World War I draft and World War II enlistment
records.
(3) Enhance LIFE-M's health information by digitizing millions of causes of death for LIFE-M individuals.
(4) Publicly disseminate the new data through Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research
(ICPSR), along with variable descriptions, documentation, user guides, and trained machine-learning
models. Data releases will also include variables to integrate LIFE-M with other historical data infrastructure.
Expanding and enhancing the LIFE-M infrastructure will facilitate path-breaking research on the role of early-life
conditions on longevity, aging, causes of death, and life-course transitions for family networks across four
generations. It will also allow research to understand heterogeneity in these relationships across geographic
space and the role of moderating and mediating forces, such as rapid industrialization and urbanization, the
expansion of public health and hospital infrastructure and policy, economic collapse, and war.
The proposed work addresses a core mission of the Population and Social Processes branch of NIA:
expanding and enhancing LIFE-M data will advance fundamental knowledge about the causes and
consequences of changes in social, demographic, economic, and health characteristics of the older population
and will support research on the effects of public policies, social institutions, and environmental conditions on
the health, well-being, and functioning of individuals over their life-course.
