U.S. Participation in the Development of a Transnational Database on Family Income

卢森堡收入研究（LIS）项目是一个国际社会科学联盟，目前有18个工业化国家参与，这些国家已同意汇集生活在其不同经济体中的家庭收入的微观数据。这样提供的数据进行统计比较，并储存在卢森堡的一个中心设施中，研究人员可在现场或通过计算机化电信网络远程访问这些数据。LIS数据库为收入分配、现金和非现金收入转移系统、不同人口群体的相对经济福利水平以及许多其他主题提供了丰富的资源，这些主题现在或很快将成为全球社会关注的问题。数据设施的支助是由成员国组成的财团在分摊费用的基础上提供的。美国国家科学基金会提供的资金构成了美国对该联盟的参与，这些资金有助于确保LIS数据库对美国社会科学家的潜在价值得以实现。需要所有成员国的充分合作，以保证数据检索的可行性，保持高标准的数据质量，并逐步放宽对某些类型的数据分析的方法限制。国家科学基金会的资金不仅代表了美国在企业中的合作，还保证美国参与所有重要的发展决策，并帮助抵消数据库维护和更新的成本。这一跨国项目在其近十年的存在中取得了令人印象深刻的成果。

The Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) project is an internation-al social science consortium currently participated in by 18 in- dustrialized nations which have agreed to pool microdata on the incomes of families living within their diverse economies. The data so furnished are made statistically comparable and stored at a central facility in Luxembourg, where they may be accessed by researchers either on-site or remotely through a computerized telecommunications network. The LIS database provides a rich resource for multifaceted analyses of income distributions, of systems of cash and noncash income transfers, of relative levels of economic well-being across different demographic groupings, and of many other topics which are now, or soon will be of worldwide societal concern. Support for the data facility is provided by the consortium of member nations on a shared-cost basis. Funds provided by the National Science Foundation constitute United States participation in the consortium, and these funds help assure that the potential value of the LIS database to U.S. social scientists will be realized. The full cooperation of all member nations is required in order to guarantee feasibility of data retrieval, maintenance of high standards of data quality, and gradual relaxation of methodological constraints on certain types of data analysis. National Science Foundation funds not only represent U.S. cooperation in the enterprise, they also assure U.S. involvement in all important developmental decisions as well as helping to offset the cost of database maintenance and update. In its nearly ten years of existence the results of this transnational project have been impressive.