Newsletter

Dear readers,

We are glad to close this year with yet another extensive data release of 35 additional micro-datasets added to the LIS and LWS Databases. This adds up to 151 new datasets in the year 2023, which marks a record number of released datasets in one year since the beginning of LIS! In this release, the whole SHIW data series from Italy has been (re-)harmonised, extended, and revised for consistency; it covers now the period IT77 to IT20 in LIS and IT95 to IT20 in LWS. We are particularly grateful for the work by Prof. José Ricardo Bezerra Nogueira (University of Pernambuco) and Dr. Carlos Feitosa Luna (Centro de Pesquisas Ageu Magalhães – CpqAM), which again allowed for the construction of disposable income in the Brazilian PNADC data; their expertise in microsimulation allowed for the additional availability of social contributions and income taxes, as well as the correction of underreporting of various income sources. Right now, LIS only released a first product of this collaboration (BR16 to BR22), additional datasets from earlier years will follow shortly. Other updates concern BE18 to BE21, IL19 to IL21, RO14, RO16, RO20, and UK21 in LIS, as well as LU21 in LWS.

The Inequality Matters article by Dirk Witteveen (University of Oxford) and Paul Attewell (GC, CUNY) studies the relationship between undergraduate programs and earnings inequality among college graduates in the United States. The authors consider two perspectives to understand the role of undergraduate majors in earnings inequality. First, they focus on the distribution of college majors across occupations, asking whether the concentration of college majors within an occupation is associated with occupational-level earnings. Second, they examine the importance of “matching” an individual’s own college major with the commonly held major in the occupation.

Michele Bavaro (University of Oxford) and Piotr Paradowski (LIS & Gdańsk University of Technology) study the missing part of the wealth distribution in surveys; they present a methodology to correct for under-reporting of financial assets in these surveys. This procedure is applied to the wealth datasets of Austria, Canada and Italy.

In a third article Piotr Paradowski gives a brief summary of the international conference “Income and Wealth Inequality: Drivers and Consequences” jointly organized by LIS and the Faculty of Management and Economics at the Gdańsk University of Technology (Gdańsk Tech) and held on September 27-29 in Gdańsk.

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

After announcing the return of Sweden to the LIS Database in June this year, we have yet again exciting news to share. Romania is back on the map as well! LIS was very pleased that the Romanian National Institute of Statistics (INSSE) agreed that microdata from Romania could be made available in the LIS Database for world-wide cross-national research. We are hence glad to announce the release of 12 new datasets from the Romanian Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC). We are grateful to the INSSE for this new collaboration, and we are looking forward to receive new datasets in future!

Needless to say, several recent datasets from other countries were also added to the LIS Database, among which two from Georgia, two from Lithuania, two from Mexico, one from Norway, two from Sweden, five from Taiwan, and one from Uruguay. The Norwegian series was equally updated in the LWS Database with the release of one more datapoint (NO21), accompanied by a backwards revision for the whole series. More information on this release and all revisions in LIS and LWS can be found in the ‘Data News’ section.

The (LIS)2ER initiative is in the process of organising this year’s workshop on the theme “Housing Policy and Wealth Inequality”. This workshop is organised in collaboration with the University of Luxembourg’s PROPEL (PROactive Policymaking for Equal Lives) project, which studies the causes and consequences of housing inequality, and is funded by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR). The workshop will take place on 28-29 November 2023 at the Luxembourg University, Belval Campus. Stay tuned for further information on the registration details and the workshop programme.

We are happy to have some new insights on wealth inequality in our Inequality Matters section with an article by Sebastian Will (University of Freiburg) emphasizing the huge role that homeownership plays in shaping wealth inequalities. In addition, the recent fiscal reforms in Lithuania and Romania and their effects on the LIS microdata prompted the writing of two short notes, one by Carmen Petrovici (LIS) and one by Gintare Mazeikaite (LIS). Both pieces highlight the importance of the institutional context when analysing micro data across countries and over time, and gross wages in particular. Finally, Josep Espasa Reig (LIS) describes lissyrtools, a newly released R package developed at LIS that can be downloaded from the new LIS GitHub repository; the tool provides a set of commonly used functions that can easily reproduce LIS estimates such as those in DART, IKF and in the Compare.It dashboard.

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

Exciting news about LIS and its growing databases! Not only has LIS celebrated its 40th anniversary last month (please find the proceedings of the 40th anniversary conference here), we also succeeded in closing one of the most requested LIS data gaps since numerous years. In addition, we are releasing a new documentation innovation at LIS.

Data news first! We are thrilled to announce that with this release the LIS Database contains now annual Swedish data for the period 2002-2020. Further annual datapoints back in time and various datapoints for the LWS Database are in preparation. We are grateful for the continued support by Statistics Sweden!

Our data team also added annual data for the United States (US63 to US78) and the most recent data for US21, and each one dataset for Austria (AT20), Canada (CA19), and Italy (IT20). The wealth module for the Italian SHIW data is in preparation and will be added in the September data release.

Compare.It is LIS’ new comparability tool and the latest addition to its documentation system, where users will find (1) information about country-level consistency and limitations of the LIS harmonisation efforts, (2) visualisation of inequality measures by the underlying country series and (3) continuously updated comparisons between aggregated micro data and national accounts figures.

Our articles in the Inequality Matters section look at inequality trends in Latin America. Mauricio De Rosa (Universidad de la República, Uruguay), Ignacio Flores (CUNY and PSE), and Marc Morgan (Geneva University) apply a systematic methodological procedure enriching harmonised microdata from ten countries in the region through information from tax data, national accounts, and in-kind transfers. In a second article Jad Moawad and Daniel Oesch (both University of Lausanne) challenge the thesis of a middle class squeeze; they argue that the great loser of the last four decades has been the working class. The authors trace the evolution of employment and income by social class in six large Western countries. Last but not least, Taylor Kroezen (LIS) summarised the proceedings of the 40th Anniversary Conference. A highlight was its concluding roundtable discussion on the future of LIS moderated by François Bourguignon with renowned speakers from local and international institutions including Serge Allegrezza (STATEC), Richard Blundell (University College London), Peter Lanjouw (LIS), Aura Leulescu (Eurostat, EU Commission) and Luis Felipe López-Calva (World Bank).

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

Exciting news about Luxembourg! Our data team completed the work on annualising the Luxembourgish data. LIS Database users can now analyse a data series of 35 consecutive years from 1985 to 2019. We also extended the availability of additional annual/biennial datapoints for Canada (1971 to 1995) and annualised the Spanish ECHP and SILC series for the LIS Database (time periods 1993 to 2000 and 2004 to 2019).

We are looking forward to further applications to our annual LIS Summer Workshop, this year coinciding with a short conference devoted to the 40^th anniversary of LIS. Also, Gdansk University of Technology & Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) invites proposals for the conference “Income and wealth inequality: drivers and consequences” in late September.

Inequality matters! Our research articles look at inequality dimensions from various angles. The first article in this issue by Juan Cruz Ferre (The Graduate Center, CUNY) sheds light on the varying welfare policy approaches in Latin America in the first two decades of the 21st century. The work shows that it is essential to understand the history of social security in Latin America to analyse the success in inequality reduction, as well as the persistence of inequality in this region.

A new book by Rosa Mulè and Roberto Rizza seeks to offer re-interpretation of labour market policy regimes from a gender perspective. Drawing on the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) datasets, the book studies gender inequality trends before and after the global financial crisis across eight high-income countries. Rosa Mulè (University of Bologna) provides an overview about the main findings of the book.
The third article by Petra Sauer (LISER / LIS / INEQ) and Ulrike Schwabe (DZHW, Hanover) argues that heterogeneity within the tertiary level became increasingly relevant to explain societal outcomes such as employment opportunities, income inequality and social mobility. Exemplified with the case of Germany, this article gives some hints how in the LIS databases international and national classifications can be used for cross-national research with respect to coping with the diversity of tertiary degrees.

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

This end-of-the year LIS data release is all about the United Kingdom and Ireland.
The LIS Database contains now annual data from the Family Expenditure Survey (FES) for the period UK68-UK93. This leads to the longest annual data series at LIS, spanning a period of more than 50 years. Also, the LWS Database has seen an extension for the United Kingdom – the new dataset UK19 is based on the Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS). In addition, we released one more data point for Ireland (IE19) in the LIS Database.

The 2022 (LIS)²ER workshop on policies to fight inequality – organised annually by the LIS Cross-national Data Center and LISER – aimed to offer a forum to discuss novel research and the policy implications of differential consumption patterns across the income distribution and the distributive impacts of differential exposure to price variations and environmental taxation. This issue’s Inequality Matters section took up the event in two articles. Denisa M. Sologon (LISER) and her coauthors look at the current cost of living crisis, and how it affects people differently. For their analyses, they choose a subset of countries with different inflation experiences in the EU and with different welfare policies to address the cost of living crisis: Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, and Portugal. The results show well that there is no ‘one fits all’ approach to respond to the crisis. In another article, Daniele Checchi (University of Milan), Petra Sauer (LISER / LIS / INEQ), and Philippe Van Kerm (LISER / University of Luxembourg) provide a synopsis of the workshop and discuss key lessons learned from the various presentations.

Extensive literature has covered the topic of women’s entrance into the labour market, however, little is known about the overall effect of increased female labour force participation on women’s economic position. Using a RIF decomposition approach, a third article in Inequality Matters shows that economic independence has had a very different effect on women depending on their position at the income distribution.

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

LIS is currently seeking applications to fill three positions: one at LIS and two at the National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies of Luxembourg (STATEC). Please consider applying, when you share the strong passion of data management and cross-national harmonisation with us!

Great news for our LIS Database users – Chinese data CN18 are now available in LISSY! Like the two previous data points from China, the dataset is based on the latest wave of the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) carried out by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the China Institute for Income Distribution (CIID). This addition enables analysing socio-economic and demographic changes within the Chinese society and across countries in the more recent period.

Other data addition concerned Austria, Norway, Peru, and the United Kingdom for LIS and Canada, Chile and Norway for LWS.

The Inequality Matters section includes this time the following: LIS Aldi Award 2021 winner Xabier García Fuente (Universitat de Barcelona) sheds light on how different welfare states reduce inequality through taxes and transfers. Using all LIS datasets, García Fuente provides several insights into cross-national differences in the world regions, while also supplying various indicators to measure how pro-poor or pro-rich social benefits are.

In Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, child poverty rates are relatively low, despite weak social protection for families with children. This joint work by several authors first focuses on the welfare regime approach in East Asia. However, then the authors present that there are other common characteristics contributing to their relative poverty success.

Peru is one of the Latin American countries that experienced substantial income growth and strongly decreasing intergenerational inequalities since the early 2000s. Analysing the Peruvian data from 2004 to 2019, Gintare Mazeikaite shows how income growth has been especially beneficial for some groups of the society, but how it left other groups behind, the elderly in particular

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

Summer arrived in Luxembourg, and so did the Summer data release 2022. With this release, the LIS Database now contains a 42 years long annual series of US data from CPS-March Supplement/ASEC from US79 to US20. We gladly announce also the first part of our annual series for Luxembourg, LU15 to LU19. Other data releases for the LIS Database refer to Germany (DE19), Mali (ML20), and Peru (PE11-PE19). The Luxembourg Wealth Study (LWS) Database now contains for the first time data from Chile, CL17, with several more datasets in the pipeline.

LIS is happy to invite you to the 2022 Summer Lecture on “The geography of income mobility” at the Belval-University Campus, Luxembourg on Monday, July 4th 2022.
“The Atlas of Inequality Aversion” – this is the name of a new complementary dataset created by Stanislaw Maciej Kot (Gdansk University of Technology) and Piotr Paradowski (LIS & Gdansk University of Technology). This database contains the country-specific estimates of inequality aversion, Atkinson index, equally distributed equivalent income, and the GB2 distribution parameters. It contains values for 664 data points for 56 countries dating as far back as the late 1960s. Better understanding a population’s tolerance to inequality is key to also inform and advice economic policy decision-making.

The three articles in the Inequality Matters section are covering the following topics. Roberto Pancrazi and Gabriele Guaitoli (University of Warwick) analyse how intergenerational inequalities have evolved over the last 20 to 30 years across 42 countries. By comparing various indicators, Louis Chauvel (University of Luxembourg) is comparing results based on the recently added French data series from the Tax Income Survey against the previously available data from the household budget survey. Carmen Petrovici, Jörg Neugschwender, and Heba Omar (LIS) are looking in the new Luxembourgish data from 2015 to 2019, breaking down poverty rates by household type and immigration background.

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

With the further relaxation of the COVID19 restrictions in sight, we are happy to announce that this year’s edition of the LIS Summer Workshop will return to in- person courses on the Belval University Campus in Luxembourg! This year’s workshop also marks the 30^th anniversary of the LIS Summer Workshop series. For more information, please visit the workshop page. Applications should be submitted online by April 10, 2022.

This spring data release sees the addition of 57 new datasets for 6 different countries, including a whole series of data for the first ever low-income country in the LIS Database, Mali. On top of 8 data points between 2011 and 2019 from the Malian Modular and Permanent Household Survey, the LIS additions include annual series for Canada (from 1996 to 2018), France (five data points from 1970 to 1990 and annual data from 1996 to 2018) and Uruguay (from 2004 to 2019), as well as one new data point each for Ireland (IE18) and Norway (NO19), the latter also added to the LWS Database. The new French series represents a switch from the previously used Household Budget Survey data to the data based on tax records, with a longer coverage in time, annual data, and a more comprehensive measure of the incomes of the French households, and we are confident that it will open many new research possibilities. Similarly, the new Malian data will offer our users the possibility, for the first time, to analyse the income and consumption distributions in a low-income country and compare them to distributional patterns of middle- and high-income countries.

Last but not least, a brief summary of the Inequality Matters articles in this issue: Zachary Parolin (Bocconi University & Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University) and Janet C. Gornick (GC CUNY) attempt to adjudicate different perspectives on inclusive growth and identify the levels and sources of inclusive income growth across eight high-income countries from the 1980s to 2010s. They introduce a methodological framework that allows to measure the additive contribution of changes in taxes, transfers, composition, and other factors including market institutions in shaping income growth at each point along an income distribution. Anda David (AFD) and Teresa Munzi (LIS) address the Malian exceptionalism of low inequality level by looking into the results of an innovative research that was carried out within the framework of research agreements with the Agence Française de Développement and the Malian Statistical Institute. More precisely, they look at inequality in Mali based on income data rather than the more usual consumption-based approach, and conclude with some interesting policy-relevant recommendations.

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

2021 ends with two exciting news!

First, we are glad to announce that we strengthened our ties to the International Inequalities Institute (III) at the London School of Economics (LSE), which led to the establishment earlier this month of the UK LIS Satellite Office. Similarly to the longer established US Satellite Office (currently at CUNY), this second LIS Satellite Office aims at building on the complementarity between high-quality data provision and research excellence in order to exploit synergies to foster innovative research in the field of inequality and social policy. Please find more information about this collaboration in the news section in this newsletter issue.

Second, this year ends with a remarkable release of 61 new datasets for the LIS Database and 2 more datasets for the LWS Database in this quarter. This includes data points for Australia (AU16 and AU18 for LIS and LWS), Russia (RU19), Vietnam (VN05, VN07, and VN09), and annual series for Austria (AT03 to AT19), Colombia (CO01 to CO20), Paraguay (PY97 to PY20), and Poland (PL05 to PL20). We hope that the various annual micro data series help the LIS users to analyse better inequality trends and patterns inside and between these countries. We look forward to hearing from you and your analyses. We are happy to see that many of the 2021 LIS & LWS working papers were published in well-perceived peer-reviewed journals.

To those of you who are used to access the Inequality and Poverty Key Figures, please note an update of methodology consistent to the one applied in DART. Please note, that we also updated our programs section on the website, where we provide the syntax with the new methodology to replicate the numbers in LISSY. Stay tuned for the update of the self-teaching material during the next weeks, which equally introduces the new methodology.

Last but not least, a brief summary of the Inequality Matters articles in this issue: Felix Estgen takes a closer look at a selection of the data newly made available in the LIS Database. Gintare Mazeikaite (LIS) and Merve Uzunalioglu (LISER & UCL) elaborate on the reasons why earnings gaps arise and persist; the authors highlight annual trends in gender employment and earnings gaps in Austria, Germany and Switzerland since the early 2000s. Teresa Munzi (LIS) and Jörg Neugschwender (LIS) describe the particular challenges that arose during harmonisation of the annual Colombian micro data series. Marie Valentova (LISER & University of Luxembourg) and Merve Uzunalioglu (LISER & UCL) summarise the 2nd workshop of the (LIS)²ER initiative: “Policies to Fight Inequality: The Case of Work-life Reconciliation and Family Policies”.

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

I am delighted to be writing to you as the new LIS Director. It is enormously exciting to be stepping in the shoes of Daniele Checchi whose five years in charge have left LIS more visible, respected and relevant than ever. I am grateful for the trust and confidence that has been put in me by Daniele, the LIS team, and by Francois Bourguignon and the entire ASBL. I am honored too, to be following in the footsteps of previous directors Janet Gornick, Markus Jantti, and founders Tim Smeeding and Lee Rainwater. I look forward to forging good working relations with the LIS team and hope to take advantage of the reasonably close proximity of my home town, Amsterdam, to Esch-Belval in order to become a regular face also in the corridors of the LIS office in Luxembourg.

The LIS Directorship was perhaps not the most immediately obvious step in my career. After 23 years in the research department of the World Bank, I have been teaching economics at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam since early 2015. I am a development economist and have been focused on development issues throughout my career. However, analyzing and measuring economic wellbeing in low income countries has been a central focus of my research throughout the past three decades. I have been heavily exposed to the challenges and opportunities that household survey data embody. I have been involved in the study of issues surrounding data harmonization, and I have actively participated in the exploration of methods to strengthen data comparability. From that perspective, the move to LIS with its mission to disseminate high quality, harmonized, household survey data, makes a good deal of sense. I am thrilled to come on board for this reason.

I hope, moreover, that my experience and background in development may also be helpful given the particular juncture that LIS finds itself at. There is steadily increasing flow of datasets from low and middle-income countries entering into the LIS archives. Whether, and how, to harmonize these with the core LIS data, are important questions. There clearly exists demand for an ability to conduct cross-country comparisons, along a variety of dimensions, involving both developed and developing countries. But as the range of countries in terms of levels of economic development, widens, the underlying data also become increasingly diverse in terms of quality, structure, and composition. Fundamental questions, such as the definition of income, consumption and wealth have to be revisited. New harmonization methods may need to be experimented with. Judgement calls have to be made. We need to reflect on how LIS can best navigate these new opportunities. I hope to contribute to that reflection.

As ideas develop, we will be looking to air them in our LIS newsletter. I hope that you will also convey to us your thoughts and reactions. It promises to be an exciting time!

Enjoy reading!

Peter Lanjouw

Dear readers,

It is time to announce the Luxembourgish summer updates! The LIS Database has been further extended for Germany; two more recent data points (DE17 and DE18) and further annual data from DE84 to DE99 have been added. The series now provides 35 consecutive years. With the addition of four Dutch datasets (NL15 to NL18), LIS closed the Wave X and XI data gaps for the Netherlands. Additional data were also added for Lithuania (LT18), Mexico (MX05 and MX06), Russia (RU18) and the United States (US19).

Also LIS’ wealth database continues growing again. One dataset from Slovenia (SI17) and one dataset from Spain (ES17) have been added to our LWS Database.

We are grateful for continued collaboration with the Economic Research Forum (ERF), which allowed for another addition to the ERF-LIS Database. Egypt – EG17 is now available in the harmonised ERF-LIS Database, accessible through LISSY.

In the Inequality Matters articles Petra Sauer (LISER / LIS / Vienna University of Economics and Business) and Philippe Van Kerm (LISER and University of Luxembourg) present some work from the ongoing (LIS)²ER project; using the LIS data they describe how the distribution of labour incomes earned by tertiary and non-tertiary educated workers compare. Their key concern is to analyse, what educational expansion potentially implies for labour income inequality.

The second article in Inequality Matters by Lorena Zardo Trindade (LIS) analyses consumption expenditure patterns across Europe. Zardo Trindade provides an investigation on how the household consumption expenditure shares change across EU countries, and whether there is convergence of consumption expenditure behaviour among them over time; a particular focus is placed on cross-national differences among low-income households.

LIS is happy to invite you to the 2021 LIS Virtual Summer Lecture on the topic of “Extraordinary times, extraordinary measures: A Review of Methods to Address Data Deprivation in Developing Countries” by Professor Peter Lanjouw (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam).

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

We are excited to announce yet again many additions to the LIS and LWS Databases! As of now, we also provide an annual series for Israel (IL01-IL18). LIS is very grateful to the colleagues at the National Insurance Institute of Israel for its great support during the harmonisation of those data. Besides revisions, the British series has been extended to provide additional years UK96 to UK98 and UK18, leading to an annual series starting from 1994. Additional data points were added for Norway (NO16), and Slovakia (SK14-SK18).

With this release, we also advertise a central extension to our LWS Database. Our users can now access plenty harmonised wealth information and behavioural variables from the US-SCF 2019 data, which enlarges the American series to 24 years (US95-US19). One additional data point was added for Norway (NO16).

In the Inequality Matters contributions Teresa Munzi (LIS) and Jörg Neugschwender (LIS) take a closer look at changes in the income distribution from 2000 to the late 2010s in Canada, Germany, the UK, and the US. They analyse the redistributive impact following three definitions market income, gross income, and disposable income, with a view to setting the ground for the type of evidence needed to contribute to the inequality reduction debate.

Piotr Paradowski (LIS) utilises the new wave of US-SCF data in LWS in order to show that financial information is essential for households to make the right decisions for investing, saving, or borrowing. This brief aims to examine the sources of information utilised by households for investing decisions. It also assesses how the usage of financial information sources changed over time and whether they correlate with households’ investments.

Video recordings of the first (LIS)2ER workshop on “The Distributional Effects of Higher-Education Expansion” are now available! The workshop aimed to expand and deepen the understanding of the implications of the mass expansion of higher education for inequality.

Last but not least, we would like to warmly welcome Peter Lanjouw as the new LIS Director starting from September 2021. Welcome aboard Peter!

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

Our databases are further growing! In order to enlarge the availability of long annual time series besides Germany and the United States in the LIS Database, we are in the process of harmonising an annual series for the United Kingdom. With this release, we add a first series of the latest 20 consecutive years (UK99-UK18); more data points will be released in March 2021. The Belgian data series BE03-BE17 has also been annualised. Additional data points were added for Estonia and South Korea. We are equally excited to release five more datasets for the LWS Database: AT17, LU18, UK13, UK15, and UK17. We are grateful for our data providers’ efforts!

In the Inequality Matters contributions Maximilian Longmuir (Freie Universität Berlin), Carsten Schroeder (Freie Universität Berlin and Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) at DIW Berlin), and Matteo Targa (Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) at DIW Berlin) provide novel evidence for two highly debated questions in the literature, i.e. whether job polarization is a local or global phenomenon and whether it entails distributional effects. Bilyana Petrova (Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, GC, CUNY and Max Weber Programme at the European University Institute) discusses how globalisation is shaping economic redistribution in Central and Eastern Europe thirty years after the start of the post-communist transition. By using Theil indices, Manuel Schechtl (Humboldt University Berlin) examines income inequality between the six most prevalent family types before and after income taxation across welfare states. Petra Sauer (LISER / LIS / Vienna University of Economics and Business) and Philippe Van Kerm (LISER and University of Luxembourg) provide a synopsis of the various papers presented during the virtual (LIS)2ER workshop on “The Distributional Effects of Higher Education Expansion”.

Our online tutorial series has been extended lately by new contributions by Professor Louis Chauvel (University of Luxembourg). In these video tutorials, Chauvel explains step by step the replication of various cross-national inequality charts.

Please note LIS has currently two vacancies. We are looking forward to your applications!

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

Exciting news! Yet again, the Luxembourg Wealth Study (LWS) Database contains a new country! With the addition of two datasets from Estonia, the LWS Database contains now 60 datasets from 18 countries. For the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Database we continued our efforts to further annualise our data series. With this data release, the Irish and the Swiss data series in the LIS Database contain now partly annual data (IE02 – IE17 & CH06 – CH17). We would like to express our sincerest gratitude to our data providers who not only supported these additions in the first place, but also ensured high quality data by their reliable technical assistance during the harmonisation process.

In the Inequality Matters articles you find this time a broad range of topics. Informed by new evidence and stylised facts about the distribution of housing-related debt across various socio-economic groups, the article by Nicolas Woloszko and Orsetta Causa (OECD) discusses potential policy trade-offs between risks and opportunities associated with the regulation of mortgage markets. ‘Gender: The Hidden Dimension in the Measurement of Economic Inequality’ – Petra Sauer (LISER / LIS / Vienna University of Economics and Business), Miriam Rehm (University Duisburg-Essen), and Katharina Mader (Vienna University of Economics and Business) are taking stock of the discussion and provide some valuable insights for ways forward.

In this issue, we place a strong focus on technical issues. Jörg Neugschwender (LIS) compares the previous top and bottom coding procedures used at LIS with alternative measures. In the upcoming months LIS will be adopting a new practice for a top and bottom code for its Key Figures and DART. Gintare Mazeikaite (LIS) takes a closer look at the recently released 2017 PPPs in the World Development Indicators. The updated PPPs can already be accessed in our LISSY system.

The recently launched online tutorial series by the LIS team, in replacement of the 2020 LIS Summer Workshop, has been extended lately by new contributions by Philippe Van Kerm (University of Luxembourg / LISER), and will be also joined by Louis Chauvel (University of Luxembourg) in the upcoming weeks.

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

LIS is very excited to release annualised data for the United States in the LIS Database (US91 to US18 based on the CPS-ASEC). With the United States, LIS has now annualized the second long series next to Germany (DE91 to DE16). In addition, we are happy to announce the inclusion of a short annual series for Lithuania (LT09-LT17). For more data announcements in LIS for Greece, Russia, and South Africa, please see our ‘data news’ section.

With the addition of wealth data for South Africa (ZA15 & ZA17), we add the first upper middle income country to the LWS Database. Also, three datasets from the 3rd wave of the HFCS data have been harmonised to the LWS variable list (FI16, GR18, and SK17).

Following the success of continued collaboration between ERF and LIS, we are delighted to announce the release of the new ERF-LIS Database – 27 datasets from seven MENA region countries have been made accessible through LISSY. These datasets were acquired from the ERF – Harmonized Household Income and Expenditure Surveys (HHIES) database and harmonised according to the LIS template following the same naming convention and standards applied to the LIS datasets.

Finally, the newly released web-based version of LISSY, which includes graphing functionalities, is exemplified by Josep Espasa-Reig.
More exciting news on our interactive visualisation tool – Data Access Research Tool (DART) are coming soon!

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

LIS is grateful to STATBEL who made it possible to close the data gap for Belgium in the LIS Database – now available are five more datasets covering the period from 2004 to 2016. In addition, we are happy to announce the inclusion of a new country to the LIS Database. The new dataset Palestine – PS17 contains information on incomes and expenditures. For more data announcements for Canada (LIS), Czech Republic (LIS) , and Italy (LIS & LWS) see our ‘data news’ section.

We are looking forward to release a new interactive visualisation tool – Data Access Research Tool (DART). DART provides unrestricted access to explore income and wealth inequality around the world. The innovative feature is its richness of inequality measures disaggregated by different social strata.

We recommend you to read through our latest inequality research articles. Arthur B. Kennickell develops illustrative examples applied to the Survey of Consumer Finances to highlight some of the problems in making comparisons of wealth inequality measures when there are specific defects in the measurement of the upper tail of the distribution. By using a novel approach to distributional analysis Marco Ranaldi analyses the dynamics of the capital share of income and how it affects inter-personal income inequality. Carlos Gradín showcases common inequality measures (Gini & Mean Log Deviation) decomposed by different social strata.

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

LIS is closing up an exciting year! With the release of the new variable list in the first half of the year, we achieved higher comparability among the harmonised datasets. This enabled not only an eased cross-national comparison, but also allowed us to increase new data releases in the second half of the year (26 datasets). With the inclusion of MX18 in this release, we gladly announce the first dataset in LIS Wave XI. Likewise, we are happy to add two more countries for the LWS Database Luxembourg (LU10/LU14) and Japan (JP04/JP09/JP11/JP14). In this context, LIS acknowledges the importance of continued funding by our contributing partners, which guarantees expanding data harmonisation efforts in 2020 and beyond. We just announced a new job opportunity for a Micro Data Expert at LIS.

The rise of radical populist parties counts as one of the more important developments in recent European political economics. Brian Burgoon, Sam van Noort, Matthijs Rooduijn, and Geoffrey Underhill combine in our first Inequality Matters article cross-sectional data on party preferences from the European Social Survey (ESS) with data from the LIS Database. They provide evidence that income stability, distributional position, and support or vote for radical parties can be well linked. The second Inequality Matters focuses on the growth of unit non-response in household surveys and its potential effect on biased estimates of income distribution measures. Using the US Current Population Survey (CPS) Salvatore Morelli and Ercio Munoz illustrate how one correction method works and how it can be implemented easily.

In short, this issue’s four Highlights cover the following topics: Dmitry Petrov Dóbrikov extends the definition of market income by inclusion of real estate annuities, financial annuities, and imputed rent. He exemplifies this exercise using the series of Spanish wealth data available in the LWS Database. Andrej Cupak and Piotr Paradowski present several new results from the growing LWS Database; they show the evolution of median net wealth, the composition of household assets and the distribution of net wealth. Rosa Melfi looks at CCT policies introduced in Uruguay around 2005-2006 and its effects in terms of poverty reduction among the population as a whole and also specifically among children. And last, Rozane Bezerra de Siqueira, José Ricardo Bezerra Nogueira, and Carlos Feitosa Luna examine the gap between poverty among children and among the elderly and how Brazil compares with other countries in this respect. The authors look at the incidence of social security transfers by age and by income group, as well as at the position of children and the elderly within the total income distribution in Brazil.

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

We are happy to announce the release of various new datasets in the LIS Database: Austria (at16), Brazil (br16), Colombia (co16), Finland (fi16), Japan (jp10 & jp13). Likewise, we made additions to the LWS Database – a whole new series of the Spanish wealth data has been harmonised (es02-es14).

The Central Banks of Estonia and Luxembourg have recently signed agreements to share their wealth data with us to be added to LWS Database, and so has the Lao Statistics Bureau for its Expenditure and Consumption Survey to be added to the LIS Database.

We are glad that Hugo del Valle-Inclán (University of Vigo), a former visiting scholar at LIS, shares his latest research findings with our readers. Hugo is proposing to use data on household capital income as a proxy of family background in the analysis of inequality of opportunity. His argument is very striking as capital income is much more widely available than family background information. Hugo applies various sensitivity analyses to test the accuracy of the method.

Our two highlights focus on the development of poverty measures. Laure Doctrinal and Rense Nieuwenhuis (both SOFI, University of Stockholm) raise a thoughtful question of our time – ‘who closes the gender gap in old age poverty?’. It is an important question to ask, given that the gender pension gap between men and women is approximately twice as high compared to the gender wage gap. The second article by Gintare Mazeikaite (LIS) looks at extreme child poverty after the great recession. A closer look at selected country statistics decomposed by citizenship status reveals that increases in child poverty did not affect all population groups equally.

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

Since May 1, the LIS Database is available in the new LIS 2019 Template. Following up the release of the LIS Database, now the LWS Database is also available in the 2019 Template. The 2019 Template is an exciting step forward enabling LIS to reach higher temporal and cross-country variables’ coverage, and more data points – possibly annual data series and expansion to new geographical areas.

Likewise, we are glad to announce the addition of data from Ivory Coast (CI02, CI08, CI15) and Vietnam (VN11, VN13) to the LIS Database, accomplished through a research agreement between the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and LIS.In addition, we added one more dataset for Spain ES16.

The first article in Inequality Matters is also part of the AFD research agreement. Branko Milanovic (GC CUNY) takes a broader look at inequality and redistribution in Latin American countries. Milanovic finds that more unequal market-income countries, and greater market-income inequality within a given country, are associated with greater pro-poor redistribution, although such redistribution is rather weak in Latin America compared to the economically advanced countries. The second Inequality Matters by Malte Luebker (WSI) raises endogeneity concerns of the earnings skew to support the social affinity hypothesis. When a theoretically more appropriate measure for skew in the distribution of incomes is derived from the LIS data, no evidence emerges that it is positively associated with fiscal redistribution.

In the Highlights section Louis Chauvel (University of Luxembourg) situates the newcomers Ivory Coast and Vietnam in the LIS Database in a global income/inequality map. Carmen Petrovici’s (LIS) article demonstrates how informal activities could be conceptualised, while also clarifying how this concept can be captured with the new LIS/LWS variable informal. Secondly, Petrovici shows some descriptives on the prevalence of informal activities among persons with different education levels and among those working in different economic sectors.

We encourage you to read the volume The Legacy of Tony Atkinson in Inequality Analysis , including the conference proceedings from last year’s LIS/LWS Users Conference in honour of Tony Atkinson. Together with Daniele Checchi, Janet C. Gornick, and Timothy M. Smeeding, Andrea Brandolini highlights the extraordinary role of Tony for LIS.

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

The most exciting news first! After an extensive period of evaluating our current data structure, creating and testing new variable lists for both LIS and LWS, and migrating our current data to this new structure, the LIS data team is excited to announce that the outcome of this work will be released on May 1, 2019. In short, the restructuring has aimed at raising the quality and ease-of-use of our harmonised microdata. So, mark your calendars to explore the new shape of our microdata!

The Inequality Matters column includes this time two articles analysing social protection in the U.S.. Sarah K. Bruch (University of Iowa), Marcia K. Meyers (University of Washington), and Janet C. Gornick (Graduate Center, CUNY) examine cross-state inequality in social safety net provision from 1994 to 2014. The authors embed their analysis in a broader argument about the consequences of decentralisation in safety net provision in the U.S.. In the second Inequality Matters article, Zach Parolin (University of Antwerp) provides valuable insights in the magnitude of underreporting of social benefits in the CPS ASEC data from the U.S. (the data also included in the LIS Database) and possible ways to adjust for measurement errors.

This issue’s Highlights section is devoted to the upcoming extensions of the newly shaped LIS & LWS Databases. Andrej Cupak (LIS) and Piotr Paradowski (LIS and Gdańsk University of Technology) exemplify how the LWS Database will be extended in the set of behavioural variables, in order to line up with current research trends in the field of household and personal finance. Eyal Bar-Haim (University of Luxembourg), Anne Hartung (University of Luxembourg), and Jörg Neugschwender (LIS) give an overview on how the forthcoming more detailed standardised variables on educational attainment and years of education could enrich the study of returns to education using the LIS & LWS databases.

Please note that due to this extraordinary period of migration of current datasets to the new structure, LIS has not added any new datasets in this quarter.

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

For 2019, LIS has several exciting new advancements in preparation. This time we announce that we will further raise the quality and ease-of-use of our LIS and LWS Databases. By applying a simplified variable structure, LIS will increase the pace at which we add more countries and more years. A specific highlight in this issue summarises the main changes.

This issue is also equipped with two strong inequality matters articles. Paul Hufe (ifo Munich and LMU Munich) and Andreas Peichl (ifo Munich, LMU Munich, IZA, and CESifo) utilise the normative concept of fairness for comparing income distributions across European countries. Their measure of unfair inequality illustrates well that debates about fairness can be very well informed by empirical data analysis. In the second article, Miles Corak (Stone Center, GC, CUNY) is elaborating, what it takes to build a ‘more inclusive society’. Social inclusion does not only mean eradicating child poverty, it also means creating a society where family background matters less, and where public policy guarantees a good linkage between the family, the market and the state in order to keep inequality balanced.

Besides the note on the restructuring of the LIS and LWS Databases, our highlights section includes an overview about the main challenges faced by LIS, when harmonising income data from middle-income countries (Teresa Munzi and Andrej Cupak, LIS). Heba Omar (LIS) and Jörg Neugschwender (LIS) are showing income and poverty trends for the new Russian data (the years 2011-2016 are now based on PIS carried out by Rosstat) in LIS.

Last but not least, our data team is looking for a new colleague working with us in Luxembourg! Find more information here. Also the Stone Center at GC, CUNY in New York has announced job opportunities for postdocs recently. There is also news about our ongoing collaborations with the Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD) and the Economic Research Forum (ERF).

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

This issue’s major news for the LIS community is the inclusion of additional datasets from Australia (Wave VI (AU04) and Wave X (AU14)) to both the LIS and the LWS databases. The Australian data are particularly rich for analyses studying the income-wealth-consumption nexus. The datasets AU04 and AU10 have information on all three welfare aggregates; AU14 has information on income and wealth. Further data additions are Serbia (RS16) and Georgia (GE16).

Inequality matters! Likewise, redistribution matters, as is shown in the main article in this issue by Orsetta Causa and Mikkel Hermansen from the OECD. The authors reveal well that during the last decades the low income groups became the ‘losers’ in recent developments with respect to design of tax systems – quite relevant insights for evidence-based policy design in 25 OECD countries. Also Branko Milanovic (Graduate Center, CUNY) further investigates the role of taxes and social transfers for redistribution towards the bottom 40 %; Branko’s highlight concentrates on the inequality “exceptionalism” in the US, and he shows, how the impact of taxes and social transfers differs between Germany and the US during the last 30 years. A second highlights article contributes to the question, whether or not China reached its peak of inequality. To answer this question, Jörg Neugschwender (LIS) disaggregates the Chinese LIS data in rural vs. urban areas, in order to better understand overall inequality and income distribution trends over time. Matthew C Mahutga (University of California, Riverside), Michaela Curran (University of California, Riverside), and Anthony Roberts (California State University, Los Angeles) recently provided to LIS a complementary dataset on Routine Task Intensity and Offshorability based on a detailed 2-digit ISCO-88 recoding. This issue’s highlights article shows how the data can be used by the LIS community.

We are also very pleased to announce that the Journal of Income Distribution (JID) released the special issue from the 2017 LIS/LWS user conference.

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

In this sixth issue of our quarterly newsletter ‘Inequality Matters’, we specifically focus on Latin American countries (LACs) with many respects. First of all, LIS is excited about its longest data series for Latin America – Chile comes with 12 new micro datasets (CL90-CL15) added to the LIS Database. In a short data highlight, Louis Chauvel explores the Chilean data and exemplifies the quite unique structure of the Chilean income distribution.

Latin America is also strongly covered by our first Inequality Matters article by Laura Policardo, Lionello F. Punzo, and Edgar J. Sanchez Carrera, who argue that the changes in income inequality are a result from several forces often operating in distinct directions, with GDP having a little or no effect on them, thus, contradicting the argument of the Kuznets Curve. Carmen Petrovici looks at the elderly in Paraguay – the article in the Highlights section explores the low coverage of the contributory pension system and the recently introduced non- contributory assistance programs for the elderly.

In the second Inequality Matters article, Andrej Cupak, d’Artis Kancs, and Pavel Ciaian focus on immigrant-native wage gaps in 11 high-income OECD countries. Using the LIS data, the authors reveal a first snapshot of huge cross-national variation with respect to the magnitude of immigrant-native wage gaps.

Our Highlights also cover a short study by Nishant Yonzan, Branko Milanovic, Salvatore Morelli, and Janet Gornick on comparing measurement differences in income in the top income decile between survey data and tax data for the United States. Piotr Paradowski, Teresa Munzi, and Jörg Neugschwender put the fairly good economic growth in Poland in comparison with Germany. The authors are exploring how Poland is performing in terms of inequality levels, poverty and wage growth. The second LIS/LWS Users Conference was dedicated to the legacy of Tony Atkinson – Carmen Petrovici shares some impressions of the conference which was held on May 3-4, 2018.

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

A year ago, LIS introduced its quarterly Inequality Matters – LIS Newsletter. This year, we continue to provide you with inequality research briefs, alongside with LIS & LWS data highlights, LIS micro data releases, and other developments at LIS & the Stone Center at CUNY, home to the US office of LIS. Also, we are happy to announce a strengthened collaboration with the Stone Center in 2018, which enriches the scope and diversity of Inequality Matters.

In this issue, the first Inequality Matters article by Maurizio Bussolo (World Bank), Daniele Checchi (University of Milan and LIS), and Vito Peragine (University of Bari) takes a closer look at the long term evolution of inequality of opportunity. It is particularly a disaggregation by age and birth cohorts which brings additional insight to the long term evolution of inequality of opportunity. A second cross-national Inequality Matters by Laurie C. Maldonado (Stone Center, CUNY) assesses poverty among single parents and the effect of redistribution on reducing poverty – Laurie provides three clear suggestions how the wellbeing of single parents in the U.S. could be improved. Both articles heavily rely on the LIS Database.

This issue’s data Highlights focus on the long-term real income growth in Germany vs. the United States (Jörg Neugschwender, LIS), the effect of using different equivalence scales on poverty levels and the rank of countries (Heba Omar, LIS). Among our Highlights we feature a recently published book by Rense Nieuwenhuis (SOFI, University of Stockholm) and Laurie C. Maldonado (Stone Center, CUNY) – The triple bind of single-parent families – which heavily relied on cross-national data analyses using the LIS and LWS data.

In our spring data release, LIS added major micro data additions to the LIS and LWS Databases, for example the most recent data for the U.S. 2016 for LIS and LWS, three new data points for LWS in Germany (2002/2007/2012), and China 2013, and some more.

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

Completing this first year of Inequality Matters, this fourth issue contains two strong research briefs fielded in the poverty/gender research. Janet C. Gornick (Graduate Center CUNY), Director of the US Office of LIS, promotes her work on child poverty, its cross-national differences with respect to relative and absolute measurement of poverty, the impact of redistributive policies, and the policy lessons that can be drawn from it. Rense Nieuwenhuis (SOFI, Stockholm University) takes a closer look on the link between gender inequality and economic inequality; the brief (part of a full paper) that was commissioned by UN Women and LIS, demonstrates the association between women having labour income of their own and poverty rates across high- and middle income LIS countries. Both articles enrich the perspective towards a bigger agenda of investigating more in depth economic independence of women jointly with labour markets, family types, and social protection. The presented descriptive analysis and narratives of current patterns in the data may guide further defining this agenda.

The end of 2017 also coincides with the moment, where the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) Database contains data for most of the countries in Wave IX (2012-2014), which is why we created a compilation of a few core inequality/poverty indicators. Teresa Munzi (LIS) looks at the change in the Gini coefficient as compared to 2007, the poverty rate by gender, and the redistributive effect from market income to disposable household income. In the second highlight, Jörg Neugschwender (LIS) looks at the methodological choice between relative vs. absolute measures of income levels and its development over time, exemplified for the elderly population.

At the same time, I would like to acknowledge my gratitude to those who made this launch of Inequality Matters possible and to all contributors to the four issues of this first year.

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

The Luxembourgish summer period has come to an end, but we have been busy preparing new datasets for the LIS and LWS Databases. Alongside with other data releases – Canada for LIS and Austria and Italy for LWS – LIS is happy to announce for the first time the addition of two Lithuanian micro-data sets to the LIS Database. Find out more about Lithuania in our data news section and the comparative highlight by Carmen Petrovici (LIS) on labour force participation of elderly workers in Estonia and Lithuania.

This issue’s inequality matters articles put a strong focus on global inequality; both studies address the recent evolution of global between and within country inequalities. Maurizio Bussolo (World Bank) investigates the link between increasing educational qualification and global inequality. Bussolo et al. have tested a qualification increasing scenario against a non-increasing scenario. The findings are remarkable in the light of a more equal world. Olle Hammar (University of Uppsala) and Daniel Waldenström (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN) and Paris School of Economics (PSE)) – the authors of our second inequality matters – focus on global earnings inequality. The authors elaborate a counterfactual analysis, in which earnings are held constant to the level of 1970; with a break down by country, occupation, region, and sector, Hammar and Waldenström help greatly in clarifying the key drivers in global earnings inequality.

A further highlight on the LIS data determines the unique pattern of old-age poverty in South Korea; Young-hwan Byun (SOFI, Stockholm University) analyses whether South Korean elderly are strongly affected by intra- and inter-generational income inequality. Heba Omar (LIS) studies the evolvement of poverty of households with children in developed countries from 2000 to 2013.

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

Inequality matters, which is why in this second LIS Newsletter we specifically address two major topics: trends in inequality of outcomes and inequality of opportunities. István György Tóth (Director of TÁRKI Social Research Institute, Hungary) is showing trends in inequality outcomes. He specifically points to the need of well-established institutions that regulate unintended effects of ‘excessive inequalities’. The second article by Francisco H.G. Ferreira (World Bank and IZA) elaborates on why inequality of opportunity is the ‘active ingredient’ in creating unequal outcomes. Although circumstance variables are not yet well-captured in survey data, he illustrates that there is clear evidence of observed outcomes created by inequality of opportunities. Both articles make a strong point that policy makers need to be very sensitive to contextual factors in order to address inequality developments both on the side of opportunities and on the side of outcomes.

In the highlights section, we start with a closer look at one of the papers presented at our first LIS/LWS User Conference by Elvire Guillaud, Matthew Olckers, and Michaël Zemmour. The authors stress the need for a joint analysis of average rate, progressivity of taxation, and the average rate and targeting of social transfers. Next, Carmen Petrovici gives an overview of the main highlights of the first LIS/LWS User Conference held in April in Belval. In a second article, Carmen analyses the targeting of assistance benefits in Guatemala and its evolution from 2011 to 2014, based on new datasets added to our LIS Database. The last piece by Piotr Paradowski and Lindsay Flynn illustrates how political science can benefit from advanced modelling techniques; the scholars apply statistical matching for jointly analysing partisanship and the wealth distribution.

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor

Dear readers,

In order to strengthen and promote research and policies tackling social and economic inequalities throughout societies, LIS has launched a quarterly newsletter Inequality Matters. This newsletter will present state-of-the-art research, give policy recommendations, and visualise the richness of the LIS/LWS micro databases. Our news feeds will cover the most recent LIS micro data releases and revisions, our user’s additions to our working papers series, and news from our two offices located in Luxembourg and New York.

This first issue honours the work of Sir Tony Atkinson, whose loss we still mourn at LIS. Andrea Brandolini exemplifies the huge relevance of Tony’s academic contribution, moving ahead research on inequality. Tony’s modest personality, his wise council as president of LIS, and his distinct academic contribution will be sincerely missed, but remembered for plenty of decades to come.

This issue’s policy brief by David Natali and Emmanuele Pavolini concentrates on presenting some generic findings of the PROWELFARE project by the European Social Observatory (OSE); among the project’s goals was the exploration and evaluation of cross-national differences of occupational welfare provision in the dimensions of occupational pensions and unemployment protection. Future efforts might particularly pick up on the standardisation of data collection and documentation of occupational welfare programmes

For our Highlights section we compiled a selection of articles showing the multi-faceted information available in the LIS/LWS databases.

Enjoy reading!

Jörg Neugschwender, Editor