The HRS 2015 Life History Mail Survey (LHMS) contains questions about residential history, education history, and other important childhood and family events. The LHMS is part of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), which is funded under a cooperative agreement between the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan.
The 2015 HRS LHMS Geographic State Level (Version 2.0) data are at the state level. State-level files contain questions that were asked of all respondents about themselves (or were answered by a proxy for the respondent if the respondent was not able to fill out the questionnaire). The data file contains multiples records for each respondent or proxy (n=5,849) who filled out and returned a 2015 LHMS questionnaire with valid residential history data. The file is sorted on Household ID (HHID), Person number (PN) and row number of data entered by the respondent on Q5 (ENTRYNUM). The field period for the LHMS 2015 was December 2015 through August 2016.
Version 2 Updates
State Value Corrections: Questionable state entries were verified using questionnaire scans. Discrepancies between state codes and ZIP codes were investigated and corrected to ensure consistency.
Record Filtering: Records lacking both a start and end year as well as any valid residential history were removed to improve data completeness and reliability.
Newly Recovered Records: Additional records discovered during the review process were added to the dataset.
Product Details
| N | 5,849 |
|---|---|
| Product Type | Geographic Information |
| Latest Release | April 2025 (v2.0) |
| Documentation and Links |
This a long file which contains multiple records per respondent. The variables correspond to the table listed on page 14 of the questionnaire. The variable LH5_ENTRYNUM_15
contains the row designations of the tables.