ISR Perspectives is excited to host economist Martha Bailey – award-winning researcher, teacher, and author – who will speak about her groundbreaking NSF-funded work creating the Longitudinal Intergenerational Family Electronic Micro-Database (LIFE-M).

Using millions of US vital records on Americans born 1880-1930, the LIFE-M links health, family structure, and demographic and economic characteristics from birth to death for four generations of Americans.

This revolutionary collection of data will allow unprecedented analyses of how American families have changed across the 20th century as the economy and society have evolved. David Lam calls LIFE-M “one of the most valuable new social science resources to come along in decades.”

Selected for support under NSF's Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century Science and Engineering activity for its considerable intellectual and broad societal value, Bailey’s LIFE-M project is funded through August 2020.

BIO:
Martha Bailey is a Research Associate Professor at the Michigan Population Studies Center, an NBER Faculty Research Fellow, and an Associate Professor of Economics. Her research uses the long-run perspective of economic history to examine issues in labor economics, demography, and health in the US.