ABSTRACT

When I first read the chapter in this volume by Larry Bumpass and Kelly Raley (chap. 8), I was quite pleased that they had “surprising agreement across several surveys with different focuses, formats, and designs,” regarding overall trends and patterns in marriage and divorce from retrospective marital histories. A notable finding was the agreement of data from privately conducted surveys, such as the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), with the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey (CPS), and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), despite the latter two surveys' focus on labor force and economic issues.