lalonde: Lalonde Data

In jackcollison/causality: Tools for Performing Causal Inference with Observational Data

Description

Data from a paper by Robert Lalonde, "Evaluating the Econometric Evaluations of Training Programs," American Economic Review, Vol. 76, pp. 604-620.

Usage

data(lalonde)

Format

A data frame with 445 observations and 12 variables, described below:

age

age in years

educ

years of schooling

black

indicator variable for Black

hisp

indicitaor variable for Hispanic

married

indicator variable for marital status

nodegr

indicator variable for high school diploma

re74

real earnings in 1974

re75

real earnings in 1975

re78

real earnings in 1978

u74

indicator variable for 1974 earnings being zero

u75

indicator variable for 1975 earnings being zero

treat

indicator variable for treatment status

Details

We use data from Lalonde's economic examination of training programs in which he estimates the effect of an employment program designed to help disadvantaged workers enter the labor market (Lalonde, 1986). The data comes from the National Supported Work Demonstration (NSW), a temporary employment program that aimed to help unskilled workers find jobs. At the time of the study, the NSW program was operating in ten cities across the country, admitting women in families under Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), ex-drug addicts, ex-criminal offenders, and high school dropouts. Individuals were randomly assigned to a treatment or control group where the treated were guaranteed jobs for 9-18 months (depending on the target group and site). The treatment group was divided into sub-groups of three to five individuals who typically worked together and met with an NSW representative to discuss work performance and issues. There is within-site and between-site variation (e.g. male and female participants usually had different types of work and the different sites had different base wages). Earnings and demographic data was collected for both the treatment and control groups, both during and at nine-month intervals after the conclusion of the program. Although there was a high attrition rate, it did not affect the experimental design. Lalonde provides experimental and non- experimental examinations of the data. For our purposes, we use the data in a non-experimental context.

Source

NBER

References

Robert Lalonde, "Evaluating the Econometric Evaluations of Training Programs," American Economic Review, Vol. 76, pp. 604-620.

Examples

data(lalonde)
treat <- attr(lalonde, "treat")
age <- lalonde$age

jackcollison/causality documentation built on Dec. 20, 2021, 8:05 p.m.