LIS
What is LIS?
The Luxembourg Income Study Database
The Luxembourg Wealth Study Database
Janet Gornick, LIS Director
WorkshopTokyo, Japan
13 January 2011
13:00-13:30

Who’s who at LIS?
Abroad:● Janet Gornick● Markus Jäntti
● Caroline Batzdorf

Director (US – City University of New York))
Research Director (Sweden – Stockholm University)
Assistant Office Director & Research Associate (US)In Luxembourg:● Caroline de Tombeur● Thierry Kruten● Paul Alkemade● Helen Connolly● Julieta Perez-Amador● Teresa Munzi● Piotr Paradowski

Administrative AssistantTechnical Director and Office Director
Microdata Expert and Statistician
Data Expert and Research Associate
Data Expert and Research Associate
Data Team Coordinator and Research Associate
Microdata Expert and Research Associate

History

LIS was founded in 1983 by two US academics (TimothySmeeding and Lee Rainwater) and a team of multi-disciplinary
researchers in Europe. It began as a “study”, which later grew and
was institutionalized as “LIS”.
For nearly 20 years, LIS was part of a local research institute,
CEPS (Centre d'Etudes de Populations, de Pauvreté et dePolitiques Socio-Economiques). In 2002, LIS became an
independent non-profit institution.
LIS is supported by the Luxembourg government and by thenational science foundations and other funders in many of theparticipating countries.
We are building a growing partnership with the new University ofLuxembourg, as well as a pre-doc and a post-doc program.

LIS’’ goals● to harmonize (“lissify”) cross-national microdatasetsthat have been collected from participating countries
on income/wealth, and their components, along withdemographic and labor market data;● to provide a secure method that allows researchers
to access data that would otherwise be unavailable
due to country-specific privacy restrictions;● to create and maintain a remote-access system thatreceives research requests and returns results tousers at off-site locations; and● to promote cross-national research on the economic
and social wellbeing of persons and households.

The Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Databasesince 1983
The LIS Database now includes microdata from nearly
40 countries, mostly in Europe and North America, butalso including Australia, Israel and Taiwan – and, as oflast year, five Latin American countries.
We recently added Korea, and we will add Icelandsoon. The next major addition will be a group of middleincome countries (I will come back to this).
The LIS database contains over 200 datasets,organized into six time periods (known as waves)spanning the years 1968 to 2006.

The Luxembourg Wealth Study (LWS) Databasesince 2007
We established a network of producers of microdata on
household wealth and, modeled on the LIS Database, we
harmonized country-specific microdata into a common
template, including measures of net worth and its components.
Data from 10 countries (Austria, Canada, Cyprus, Finland, Germany, Italy,Norway, Sweden, UK, US) were made available to registered users via
remote access in December 2007.
In January 2011, we added microdata from an 11th
country: Japan.
Over the next 2-3 years, we will work with several internationalorganizations to set guidelines for wealth data collection andmeasurement, as LIS has done with income data.

Access to the data
– three pathways
First: Remote-access system
This is the primary means of access; it uses asoftware system that was designed specifically for
LIS.
Researchers write programs (in SPSS, SAS, orStata) and send them via email directly to the LIS
server; results are returned to the researcher, withan average processing time of under two minutes.
This is LIS’ “claim to fame.” Access is granted to
non-commercial researchers in financiallycontributing countries (which includes Japan).

Other pathways to the data*
Second: Web Tabulator (“the WebTab”)
The WebTab allows registered users to make tables on-line, using
keywords. Users can generate research-specific cross-national
comparisons without the need for programming.
An upgraded version was initiated last summer.

Third:Key Figures
Our website provides two sets of Key Figures. One set includes
national indicators of poverty and inequality (all Waves).
The other includes indicators of economic status, focused on
employment and disaggregated by gender (now, Wave V, soon
Wave VI).

* Currently, these two tools include data only from the Luxembourg Income Study Database.

Training and other services
LIS Summer Introductory Workshops
LIS conducts annual training workshops that introduce researchers to the LIS
and LWS databases and, more generally, to cross-national research on
income, wealth, employment, and social policy. Since 1988, nearly 600
scholars have attended the workshops. Next workshop: 3-9 July 2011.

LIS Local Workshops
LIS staff also travel to participating countries to introduce policy makers,academics and researchers to the data, on-site. In the last 4 years, we haveheld local workshops in Belgium, France, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Korea – andnow Japan.

LIS Visiting Scholars Program (VSP)The VSP makes it possible to access a subset of the LIS and LWS datasetson a non-networked computer in the Luxembourg office. Access to themicrodata under the VSP is subject to a separate application and is an option
if the researcher’s needs cannot be met within the three main accesspathways, e.g., if special software is needed.

Use of LIS/LWS Datasets
The LIS Database includes (mainly) income, employment, anddemographic data, at the person and household levels.
The LWS Database includes (mainly) wealth, debt, income, employment,
and demographic data, at the household level.
Researchers who use these data come from diverse disciplines, including
economics, sociology and – increasingly – political science and the policy
sciences. Since the founding of LIS, our microdata have been used bynearly 2500 researchers.
Many researchers use the data to analyze variation in socio-economic
outcomes within and across countries.
The LIS/LWS data are often used to study the effects of economic andsocial policies on outcomes -- including income poverty, income inequality,
employment status, wage patterns, wealth levels and portfolios, genderinequality, family formation, child-wellbeing, health status, immigration,
political behavior and public opinion.

Distribution of research
Research based on the LIS/LWS data:● is catalogued in the LIS Working Paper* series, which currentlyincludes:-- 557 papers based on the LIS Database-- 10 papers based on the LWS Database-- 22 papers based on the (former) LES Database-- 3 papers in a new LIS Technical Paper series.

● has appeared in many policy reports, graduate dissertations,journal articles, and books;● is often featured in the popular media.
* The LIS website contains a Working Papers search engine, a complete set ofabstracts, and full-text versions of the papers. Papers are searchable byauthor, year, country [data], and/or keyword.

What’s next?
● Inauguration of new LIS website; launched February 2011.
www.lisdatacenter.org● Completion of LIS Database Wave VI (centered on 2004).
Thirty datasets are now up.
● Acquisition and harmonization of LIS Database Wave VII(centered on 2008). Introduction of revised template.
● Continued expansion of LWS Database.
Soon we will add Luxembourg and Spain.

Extending the universe ofcountries – a high priority● The great majority of countries now included in the LIS andLWS Databases are high-income countries.
● Eleven are middle-income countries: Hungary, Slovak Republic,Mexico, Poland, Romania, Russia, and the new Latin
American countries.
● Over the next 3-5 years, we will add 15-20 middle-incomecountries.