On March 31, 2025, NIH requested that the following language be added to this website:

This repository is under review for potential modification in compliance with Administration directives.

Respondent Cross-Year Detail Earnings

The Respondent Cross-Year Detail Earnings data set contains one record per year per employer for each of 25,179 consenting respondents who received wages during years 1978-2023, and whose records were available in the Master Earnings File (MEF). There are 869,743 respondent/earning year/employer records in the file. Information is provided for years 1978 through 2023.

Product Details

N
25,179
Product Type
Social Security Administration (SSA) Data
Entry Cohort Info
HRS; AHEAD; CODA; WB; EBB; MBB; LBB; EGENX
Updated Through
HRS 2022 Wave
Latest Release
April 2026
Version Notes
  • This data set supersedes all previous Respondent Detail Earnings releases.
  • The Social Security Weights file is not included in this data distribution set.
Documentation and Links
Notes: 

  1. Earnings records for 1978 and 1979 are incomplete; use with caution.

  2. Geographic information in HRS public release data sets is recoded to Census Division categories. Files derived from SSA administrative data may merged with these data sets, but may not be merged with any data containing geographic identifiers at a level of detail below Census Division. In addition, data sets derived from SSA administrative data may not be merged with any other restricted data set(s) without the explicit written permission of the Health and Retirement Study.