The Story of Our Lives

Since the '50s, researchers have followed the lives of one group of graduates.

ByABC News
July 24, 2007, 4:10 PM

July 25, 2007 — -- They've seen it all, from the "happy days" of the 1950s to the war on terror. Along the way, they launched their own careers, married, raised children, dealt with prosperity and heartbreak, with growing older and death.

Their story is the story of millions of Americans, but there's something different here.

For half a century now, they have been followed by scientists at the University of Wisconsin, who have compiled a unique record of the lives of about 10,000 people who graduated from that state's high schools in 1957.

The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study sponsored by the National Institute on Aging began as a state-sponsored effort to determine the aspirations of high school seniors who were about to enter the work force at a time of great change. The Soviet Union was beating the United States in the space race. The country was in turmoil over racial issues. How could the state adjust its educational system to better serve the young people who would sculpt its future?

The study was conceived as a one-shot deal, and for years afterward the research was all but forgotten. But sociologists at the university finally realized they had the foundation for an extraordinary resource. So over the past few decades they have returned to the group once designated the Happy Days Cohort from the popular television series that captured the spirit of the '50s, asking them to fill in the blanks on everything from masculinity to menopause. The result is a body of work that has contributed to hundreds of research papers and provided a prototype for long-range studies.

So how have they done? Did they prosper? Are they happy and healthy?

"They have done pretty well," said sociologist Robert Hauser, who joined the project in 1969 and now leads it. That's partly because they had a good start. Most came from stable homes, all graduated from high school, many went on to college, and most formed long-lasting relationships. But there's more to it than that.

"There's a lot of luck involved," Hauser said. "There's an awful lot of chance, and variability, in how people's lives develop."