National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) The NLSY is a pair of ongoing, nationally‑representative panel surveys administered by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), a division of the Department of Labor. The two cohorts – NLSY79 (≈12,700 respondents born 1957‑1964) and NLSY97 (≈9,000 respondents born 1980‑1984) – were first interviewed in 1979 and 1997, respectively. Each wave follows participants annually (biennially after the early years) and collects detailed information on education, employment/earnings, training, income and assets, health, family formation, child‑bearing, fertility, attitudes, civic engagement, substance use, and a wide range of demographic and contextual variables (e.g., geographic location, parental background, household composition). The survey was created to give researchers and policymakers a long‑term view of how individuals transition through key life‑course stages – schooling, labor‑market entry, marriage, parenthood, and retirement – and how macro‑economic changes affect those transitions. Its longitudinal design, large sample size, and rich “roster” data on households, jobs, and schools make it uniquely suited for intergenerational analyses, cohort‑comparisons, policy evaluation (e.g., welfare reform, labor market programs), and methodological work on life‑course trajectories. Key features include: (1) detailed job‑level data (including self‑employment and informal work), (2) a wealth of “created” variables that link respondents across waves, (3) oversamples of Hispanic, Black and economically‑disadvantaged groups for subgroup study, and (4) publicly‑available documentation and weights that enable robust, nationally‑representative inference.