Cohort Analysis in Social Research: Beyond the Identification Problem PDF
Preview Cohort Analysis in Social Research: Beyond the Identification Problem
COHORT ANALYSIS IN SOCIAL RESEARCH SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL COMMITTEE ON THE METHODOLOGY OF LONGITUDINAL RESEARCH Members, 1979 -1980 Burton H. Singer, Chairman Gregory Markus Columbia University University of Michigan Gary Chamberlain Carl Morris University of Wisconsin University of Texas James S. Coleman John R. Nesselroade University of Chicago Pennsylvania State University James 1. Heckman Seymour Spilerman University of Chicago Columbia University Douglas A. Hibbs, Jf. Nancy Brandon Tuma Harvard University Stanford University Paul Holland Halliman H. Wins borough Educational Testing Service University of Wisconsin Staff Peter B. Read COHORT ANALYSIS IN SOCIAL RESEARCH Beyond the Identification Problem Edited by William M. Mason· Stephen E. Fienberg With 44 Figures Springer-Verlag New York Berlin Heidelberg Tokyo William M. Mason Stephen E. Fienberg The Population Studies Center Department of Statistics University of Michigan Carnegie-Mellon University Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213 USA USA Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: Cohort analysis in social research. Bibliography: p. 1. Cohort analysis-Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Mason, William, M. II. Fienberg, Stephen E. HB849.47.C63 1985 300'.72 84-10581 © 1985 by Springer-Verlag New York Inc. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1985 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form without written permission from Springer-Verlag, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010, U.S.A. The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, etc., in this publication, even if the former are not especially identified, is not to be taken as a sign that such names, as understood by the Trade Marks and Merchandise Marks Act, may accordingly be used freely by anyone. 9 8 7 6 5 432 1 ISBN -13 :978-1-4613-8538-7 e-ISBN -13 :978-1-4613-8536-3 DOl: 10.1007/978-1-4613-8536-3 PREFACE The existence of the present volume can be traced to methodological concerns about cohort analysis, all of which were evident throughout most of the social sciences by the late 1970s. For some social scientists, they became part of a broader discussion concerning the need for new analytical techniques for research based on longitudinal data. In 1976, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), with funds from the National Institute of Education, established a Committee on the Methodology of Longitudinal Research. (The scholars who comprised this committee are listed at the front of this volume.) As part of the efforts of this Committee, an interdisciplinary conference on cohort analysis was held in the summer of 1979, in Snowmass, Colorado. Much of the work presented here stems from that conference, the purpose of which was to promote the development of general methodological tools for the study of social change. The conference included five major presentations by (1) William Mason and Herbert Smith, (2) Karl J6reskog and Dag S6rbom, (3) Gregory Markus, (4) John Hobcraft, Jane Menken and Samuel Preston, and (5) Stephen Fienberg and William Mason. The formal presentations were each followed by extensive discussion, which involved as participants: Paul Baltes, William Butz, Philip Converse, Otis Dudley Duncan, David Freedman, William Meredith, John Nesselroade, Daniel Price, Thomas Pullum, Peter Read, Matilda White Riley, Norman Ryder, Warren Sanderson, Warner Schaie, Burton Singer, Nancy Tuma, Harrison White, and Halliman Winsborough. All of the formal papers subsequently underwent major revisions to reflect the conference discussions, and two of the discussants' comments, those of Duncan and Freedman, were developed into formal papers. This volume presents these seven papers, as well as Ryder's classic exposition vi PREFACE and two additional papers, one by Robert Johnson and one by James Heckman and Richard Robb that address issues not already covered in the conference presentations. This set of papers thus represents a substantial updating of material presented in the original conference. In particular, the identification problem in its simplest form is a point of departure for most of the chapters. Indeed, most of these contributions offer researchers assistance with a variety of problems in cohort analysis that do not relate directly to the identification problem. The appearance of these papers as a published volume is the result of a major collaborative effort involving substantial contributions from Burton Singer, Peter Read and Herbert Smith, as well as those of the editors. We are pleased to acknowledge here the persistence, commitment and hard work of these three colleagues. The volume itself was produced using computing and typesetting facilities at Carnegie Mellon University. Diana Bajzek was an invaluable aid in preparing the copy for typesetting, and for the generous lending of her expertise and guidance to this project we are most grateful. Barbara Krest prepared the computerized text for the entire manuscript, while Margie Krest prepared the mathematics and the tables, supervised the proofreading, and was responsible for the final aspects of photo-typesetting. Without all of their outstanding efforts and assistance we would have been unable to complete the volume. William M. Mason Stephen E. Fienberg CONTENTS Preface v 1. Introduction: Beyond the Identification Problem 1 William M. Mason and Stephen E. Fienberg 2. The Cohort as a Concept in the Study of Social Change 9 Norman B. Ryder 3. Specification and Implementation of Age, Period and Cohort Models. 45 Stephen E. Fienberg and William M. Mason 4. Age, Period, and Cohort Effects in Demography: A Review 89 John Hobcra.lt, Jane Menken, and Samuel Preston 5. Using Longitudinal Data to Estimate Age, Period and Cohort Effects in Earnings Equations 137 James Heckman and Richard RoM 6. Age-Period-Cohort Analysis and the Study of Deaths from Pulmonary Tuberculosis 151 William M. Mason and Herbert L. Smith 7. Analysis of Age, Period, and Cohort Effects in Marital Fertility 229 Robert A. Johnson 8. Dynamic Modeling of Cohort Change: The Case of Political Partisanship 259 Gregory B. Markus viii CONTENTS 9. Generations, Cohorts, and Conformity 289 Otis Dudley Duncan 10. Simultaneous Analysis of Longitudinal Data from Several Cohorts 323 Karl G. Joreskog and Dag Sorbom 11. Statistics and the Scientific Method 343 David A. Freedman 12. Reply to Freedman 367 Karl G. Joreskog and Dag Sorbom 13. Comments on and Reactions to Freedman, Statistics and the Scientific Method 371 Stephen E. Fienberg 14. A Rejoinder to Fienberg's Comments 385 David A. Freedman Author Index 391 Subject Index 397 1. INTRODUCTION: BEYOND THE IDENTIFICATION PROBLEM William M. Mason Stephen E. Fienbergt The term "cohort" was in common use during Roman antiquity, when it referred to a division within a legion. Since then, cohort has come to refer to considerably more, and in fact the original meaning of the word has been lost in everyday colloquy. The use of cohorts to refer to groups or aggregates defined by point of entry into a social system has long been present in the social sciences, but cohort analysis as a focus in its own right has fluctuated in its visibility, due, perhaps, to swings of interest in the study of social change. In recent history, it may not be accidental that Norman Ryder's (I965) seminal contribution to the subject of cohort analysis, "The Cohort as a Concept in the Study of Social Change," was written at a time when the ferment of social change was again perceptible in the United States. More than any other previous publication, this article suggested the potential for insight that is available from a cohort perspective-not merely in demography, Ryder's own discipline-but in the social and behavioral sciences more generally. Ryder's article, therefore, is an appropriate starting point in any consideration of the recent history of cohort analysis. Although Ryder succeeded in specifying the conceptual relevance of cohorts to an extraordinary range of substantive issues, he did not address the technical and methodological questions that inevitably surround empirical research. Many important questions about the conduct of cohort analysis remained unanswered in his discussion. For social scientists working with data that would sustain a cohort-oriented approach, methodological guidance was needed as well t William M. Mason is affiliated with the Department of Sociology and the Population Studies Center, The University of Michigan, and Stephen E. Fienberg is affiliated with the Departments of Statistics and Social Sciences, Carnegie-Mellon University. 2 WILLIAM M. MASON AND STEPHEN E. FIENBERG as conceptual clarification. The fundamental question in cohort analysis is that of determining whether the phenomenon under examination is cohort-based, or whether some other conceptualization-age-based, for example-is more appropriate. This question received early attention in epidemiology, in the study of tuberculosis. Andvord (1930) suggested the value of a cohort perspective in the analysis of tuberculosis mortality, and Frost (1939) went further, attempting to show through graphical display that apparent changes in the age-distribution of tuberculosis mortality could be more easily interpreted as a decline in tuberculosis mortality over cohorts than as changes in the age-specific mortality regime over time. Even a superficial examination of the "either-or" question leads to the conclusion that "both" might also be acceptable. That is, there is, in general, no logical reason for ruling out the possibility that both cohort and age may be relevant to the study of some phenomenon. Furthermore, it is but a short step to conclude that not only might aging- and origin-related processes (Le., age and cohort) be relevant to the matter at hand, but also that instantaneous processes (i.e., period) might also be pertinent. Indeed, the instantaneous processes might dominate. For example, recent work by Kahn and Mason (1982) suggests that political alienation, as measured in sample surveys, varies primarily as a function of time, and much less so as a function of either age or cohort. Once this point is accepted, however, the problem of distinguishing the effects of age from those of period and cohort can become difficult. In much of cohort analysis, data have typically been available, or have been constructed, in the form of a measure of central tendency conditional on age, separately for different years, or more generally for different times of observation and measurement. Analysts have rarely gone beyond this form of data array, to conceptualize and measure the phenomena and events that might be held to underlie the effects of ages, periods or cohorts. Rather, they have asked, much as is typically done in an analysis of variance setup, whether there are row differences, column differences, or diagonal differences, in the measure of central tendency for the dependent variable. Although it is possible to determine the presence of row, column and diagonal "effects," their interpretation can not be treated as a naive generalization of row and column effects in the typical analysis of variance model. The reason is that there is an
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