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NBER Working Group Descriptions

The NBER's Working Group on Cohort Studies (CS) investigates changes in well-being across generations, with a strong focus on health. The premise of the working group is that each generation is marked by particular lifetime experiences that affect it throughout the life-cycle and that are transmitted to their children either through social conditioning, or, in the case of some health conditions, through direct biological mechanisms. To understand the present we therefore need to look not only at early life conditions but also at the experience of previous generations. This requires the creation of new longitudinal data sets that cover the entire twentieth century, because many of the dramatic changes in life expectancy, health, and leisure and the consumer goods revolution occurred during the first half of the twentieth century. Assessing the importance of these changes requires in turn the quantification of the contribution of non-market goods to the national income accounts. The group's members therefore consist of specialists in economic history, family economics, health economics, and productivity. Many of the group's members are also closely involved with Robert Fogel's P01 Early Indicators of Later Work Levels, Disease, and Death which is creating longitudinal micro-level data on the first generations to reach age 65 at the beginning of the twentieth century.