A Transnational Database on Household Income

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This is a transnational study of household income. The Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) database project consists of comparable microdata on the composition of households and the structure of their incomes for 27 industrialized economies as of July 1997. It has also added labor force survey data for 14 nations under another subtitle, the Luxembourg Employment Study (LES). Over the past ten years, the LIS project has demonstrated its feasibility and usefulness as an internationally sponsored and researcher-lead database infrastructure project. It provides the means for researchers to make accurate cross-national comparisons of economic status for several nations on a simultaneous basis, addressing such questions as whether inequality is currently increasing in the most advanced, industrial nations. In particular, it is used extensively to compare levels of relative and absolute poverty across countries and over time. This award provides core support for the Luxembourg Income Study for a period of three years. During that time there will be several improvements in database management (more sophisticated electronic access system, direct availability of some data to qualified users, better on-line documentation, fourth wave of data for the mid-1990s, new surveys of the labor force); in research (inequality, poverty, and gender studies); in training (annual LIS workshops in the United States, in Europe and elsewhere); in setting new international standards for income distribution statistics; in developing purchasing power parities for income distribution studies; and in providing US users with more direct access to the other nations' surveys. The Luxembourg Income Study contributes to cross-national comparative research in economics, sociology, and the social sciences more generally. It strengthens graduate education and training in these fields, and achieves advances in database management. The research made possible by the LIS directly addresses central themes of the Human Capital Init iative, such as overcoming poverty and deprivation, fostering successful families, reducing disadvantage in a diverse society, educating for the future, and employing a productive workforce. Moreover, it is a prototype for scientific facilities in the social sciences including interdisciplinary, cross-national cooperative ventures that strengthen the data infrastructure and promote research that is liable to have important public policy implications.