U.S. Participation in the Development of a Transnational Database: The Luxembourg Income Study, 2007 - 2009.

Cuny Graduate School University Center, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

SES- 0649025 PI: Janet Gornick CUNY Graduate School This grant provides support for the continuation of NSF's longstanding support for the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). Continued support from the U.S. complements support from other financially contributing countries. The LIS, founded in 1983, is organized as a consortium of thirty countries which, via their national science foundations and other research funders, cooperatively finance LIS's research center and microdata archive. The LIS research center harmonizes microdatasets collected by each country, and employs electronic mail to make the harmonized data available to researchers around the globe. Since LIS's inception, the microdatasets, which include income, labor market, and demographic variables at the household and person levels -- have been used by over 1000 researchers in many countries to analyze economic and social policies and their effects on outcomes, including poverty, income inequality, employment status, wage patterns, gender inequality, family formation, immigration, child-wellbeing, health status, political attitudes, and voting behavior. Over 150 income datasets are now included in LIS, with more being added every year. LIS is the most respected source of cross-nationally available household microdata and the locus of an enormous body of cross-national research spanning several social science disciplines. The activities, goals and accomplishments of LIS are highly compatible with several of the NSF's priorities, as described in the 2003-2008 NSF Strategic Plan, most especially developing intellectual capital, integrating research and education, and promoting collaboration and partnerships across disciplines and institutions, especially internationally. Moreover, it fits well with NSF's longstanding emphases on developing new knowledge and making it accessible to policy-makers and to the public at large. The LIS contributes to cross-national comparative research in economics, sociology, political science and the social sciences more generally; graduate education and training; and advances in database management and access.