IPUMS USA Full Count Census Data Collection. Volume 58, Issue 4 of Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History

In 2025, the Trump administration instituted rapid changes to the data and information available on US government websites. We conducted a content ana…

Global carbon dioxide intensity declined from 2015 to 2024 following the Paris Agreement, but total emissions still increased due to economic growth, according to a global analysis of population, gros...

The digital revolution has ushered in many societal and economic benefits. Yet access to digital technologies such as mobile phones and internet re...

Current Employees: If you are currently employed at any of the Universities of Wisconsin, log in to Workday to apply through the internal application process.Job Category:FacultyEmployment Type:Regula...

How we remember our past can be shaped by the realities of our present. This study examines how changes to present circumstances influence retrospective reports of family income rank at age 16. While retrospective survey data can be used to assess the long-term effects of childhood conditions, present-day circumstances may “anchor” memories, causing shifts in how individuals recall and report past experiences. Using panel data from the 2006–2014 General Social Surveys (8,602 observations from 2,883 individuals in the United States), we analyze how changes in objective and subjective indicators of current social status—income, financial satisfaction, and perceived income relative to others—are associated with changes in reports of childhood income rank, and how this varies by sex and race/ethnicity. Fixed-effects models reveal no significant association between changes in income and in childhood income rank. However, changes in subjective measures of social status show contrasting effects, as increases in current financial satisfaction are associated with decreases in childhood income rank, but increases in current perceived relative income are associated with increases in childhood income rank. We argue these opposing effects follow from theories of anchoring in recall bias. We further find these effects are stronger among males but are consistent across racial/ethnic groups. This demographic heterogeneity suggests that recall bias is not evenly distributed across the population and has important implications for how different groups perceive their own pasts. Our findings further highlight the malleability of retrospective perceptions and their sensitivity to current social conditions, offering methodological insights into survey reliability and recall bias.

Background Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a trade-off between the health impacts of viral spread and the social and economic costs of restric...

Article: Demographic Differences in Responses to a Two-Step Gender Identity Measure | Sociological Science | Posted May 6, 2025