Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg, LIS

Authors: Janet C. Gornick, Berglind Holm Ragnarsdottir, and Sarak Kostecki

Publication: Understanding Research Infrastructures in the Social Sciences. Chapter 5, pp. 89-99

Publisher: Seismo

Editors: Brian Kleiner, Isabelle Renschler, Boris Wernli, Peter Farago, and Dominique Joye

Date: 2013

Excerpt: 

LIS — formerly known as the Luxembourg Income Study — is a unique micro-data archive and research center dedicated to cross-national analysis. LIS is located in Luxembourg and also has a satellite office at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. LIS’ mission is to enable, facilitate, promote, and conduct cross-national comparative research on socio-economic outcomes and on the institutional factors that shape those outcomes.

LIS was founded in Luxembourg in 1983 by two academics, economist Timothy Speeding and sociologist Lee Rainwater, and a Luxembourgish psychologist, Gaston Schaber. Noticing a considerable gap in available and dependable micro-data for cross-national research, their was to construct harmonized cross-national income data in order to enable meaningful cooperative research on poverty and inequality. They assembled a cross-national team that provided the micro-data and consulted on the harmonization; the first harmonized data sets were made available to researchers in 1987.

Link: Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg, LIS (PDF)