The NLSY geocode version includes state and county of residence for all respondents each
year, as well as other county-level information. To these data, I append state-level maximum AFDC
benefit levels for a family of three, the number of postsecondary institutions in each county, and the
number of enrollments associated with postsecondary institutions in each county. The latter
information comes from the 1982-1983, 1989-1990, and 1996-1997 Integrated Postsecondary
Education Data System (IPEDS), collected by the National Center for Educational Statistics.
Because it is unlikely that the number of schools is related linearly to the enrollment outcome (i.e.,
increasing from 0 or 1 schools in a county is not the same as increasing from 100 to 101), number of
schools is coded using 10 dummy variables denoting specific ranges.