LMICS: The Luxembourg Middle Income Countries Study

卢森堡收入研究(LIS)项目是一个独立的非营利性研究中心和数据库，位于卢森堡，成员来自30多个国家。LIS是由多个国家组成的财团，共同资助一个研究和数据中心。LIS协调每个国家收集的家庭收入微观数据集(以及最近的家庭净值数据集)，并使用电子邮件将数据提供给许多国家的研究人员。这些数据被世界各地的研究人员用来分析经济和社会政策及其对区域和群体特定收入结构、贫困和收入不平等、公共政策的政治支持、投票、生育率、移民、儿童福祉以及按年龄、教育水平和性别划分的工资和收入差异等主题的影响(见www.lisproject t.org)。这项提议的目的是开辟新的研究和数据创建领域，并为将中等收入国家纳入LIS数据库和使用这些数据进行初步研究创造一个新的模板。LIS项目数据库目前仅限于富裕的经合组织国家。这个项目将使LIS进入下一个最大的国家(人口和收入)，以及增长最快的国家，包括中国和印度。LMICs项目将LIS的规模大致扩大了一倍，最终增加到24个国家。该项目涉及几个步骤，每个步骤都具有相当大的智力价值和广泛的外部影响。第一个也是主要的智力问题是开发一个新的模板(或几个新模板)，以便更好地将MIC的经济生活和福祉的事实和现实整合到LIS收入定义中，该定义在富裕国家被广泛接受用于衡量福祉。收入与支出/消费之比、家庭间转移支付和汇款、以共同生活安排形式进行的家庭内转移支付、城乡差异以及健康和教育成果的衡量等问题都必须加以解决。LIS-世界银行(世行)使用当前LIS模板的费用分摊联合试点项目为调查员提供了一些关于这些问题的初步采购；最后的结果将对世行、联合国和其他机构非常有用。其次，一旦设计了模板，必须立即使用它来以这种新的方式协调数据集，并将它们整合到LIS结构中。这将涉及雇用一名LMIC项目经理。它还将涉及现有的LIS工作人员，他们将准备接受新的模板挑战。LMICs数据的制作至少要持续三年。该项目增加了拥有高质量数据并具有特定特征的国家：快速增长的大国，拥有多个数据波，以及贫困、不平等和社会支出问题，这些问题正是LIS研究非常适合的。肯定包括中国、印度和南非。欧盟27国边境上或附近的国家，如土耳其、乌克兰、埃及和摩洛哥，以及一些快速增长的亚洲国家，如泰国、菲律宾和越南，以及一些拉丁美洲国家，包括巴西、阿根廷和哥伦比亚，也极有可能出现这种情况。新的LMICs数据将在项目开始后四年内通过我们的远程访问系统向全球所有LIS用户提供。提供了概述贫困和不平等的关键数据，经济学家、政治学家、政策分析师和社会学家大量使用这些数据。因此，可以肯定会产生广泛的外部影响。最后，在第三年，项目团队将转向基于新数据的第一批研究项目，包括对贫困和不平等程度和趋势的更广泛估计，以及按性别和其他特征划分的劳动力市场结果，以及社会项目对这些结果的影响。这些发现将有助于以灵活的方式纳入更大范围国家的跨国可比性，以便首次使用灵活的研究工具(LIS)为富裕国家和中等收入国家确定关于福祉、贫困和生活水平的主要问题。由于所有用户都可以访问这些数据，数以百计的研究人员和政策分析员以及主要的国家和国际组织将很好地利用这些成果及其背后的数据。

The Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) project is an independent non-profit research center and database located in Luxembourg with members from over 30 nations. LIS is a consortium of multiple nations which cooperatively finance a research and data center. LIS harmonizes household income microdata sets (and recently household net worth datasets) collected by each nation, and employs electronic mail to make the data available to researchers in many countries. These data are used by researchers worldwide to analyze economic and social policy and their effect on such topics as regional and group-specific income structures, poverty and income inequality, political support for public policy, voting, fertility, immigration, child wellbeing, and wage and earnings differentials by age, education level and by gender (see www.lisproject.org).The objective of this proposal is to break new research and data creation ground and to create a new template for including Middle Income Countries (MICs) in the LIS database and for the initial research using this data. The LIS project database is limited at present to only rich OECD nations. This project moves LIS into the next largest (population and income wise), and most rapidly growing set of countries, including China and India. The LMICS project roughly doubles the size of the LIS, eventually adding up to 24 countries. The project involves several steps, each with considerable intellectual merit and broad external impact. The first and major intellectual issue is to develop a new template (or several new templates) that better integrate the facts and realities of economic life and well being in MIC?s into the LIS income definition which is well accepted for measures of well being in rich nations. Issues such as income vs. expenditure/consumption; inter-family transfers and remittances; intra-family transfers in the form of shared living arrangements; rural ?urban differences; and measurement of health and education outcomes must all be addressed. A joint LIS-World Bank (WB) cost-shared pilot project using the current LIS template gives the investigator some initial purchase on these issues; the final results will be highly useful to the WB, United Nations and other bodies. Second, once the template is designed, it must immediately be used to harmonize datasets in this new way and integrate them into the LIS structure. This will involve hiring one LMICS project manager. It will also involve the current LIS staff who will be ready to accept the new template challenge. The production of LMICS data continues for three years, at least. This project adds countries that have high-quality data and which have specific characteristics: fast growing, large nations, with multiple data waves, and with poverty, inequality and social spending issues of the sort to which LIS research is well suited. It definitely includes China, India and South Africa. Nations on or near the border of the EU 27, such as Turkey, Ukraine, Egypt, and Morocco are also highly probable, as are some fast growing Asian nations, such as Thailand, Philippines and Vietnam, and a number of Latin American nations, including Brazil, Argentina and Columbia. The new LMICS data will be made available to all LIS users worldwide via our remote access system no later than four years after the start of the project. The key figures summarizing poverty and inequality, which are used heavily by economists, political scientists, policy analysts and sociologists, are made available. Thus a broad external impact is assured. Finally, in year three, the project team will turn to the first research projects based on the new data, including broader estimates of the level and trend in poverty and inequality, as well as labor market outcomes by gender and other characteristics, and the effects of social programs on these outcomes. These findings will help integrate cross-national comparability for a much larger range of nations in a flexible way, so that, for the first time, the major questions about well being, poverty and living standards can be established for both rich and MIC countries using a flexible research tool (LIS). Because the data is accessible to all users, literally hundreds of researchers and policy analysts, as well as major national and international organizations, will make good use of these results and the data that underlies them.