Making the data available to researchers

LIS collects and harmonises microdatasets from upper- and middle-income countries and places them on a secure server. Microdata that would otherwise be incomparable, or impossible to access, are thus made available to researchers world-wide. Microdata in the Luxembourg Income Study and Luxembourg Wealth Study Databases are made available to registered researchers exclusively for non-commercial purposes.

The data are available to users through three distinct pathways:

LISSY, a remote-execution system

Web Tabulator, an online table-maker

Key Figures, two sets of national indicators generated by LIS:

Inequality and Poverty
Employment by Gender

Who has access?

If you are a student, in any country, you may access the microdata for free. If you are not a student, your access to the microdata depends upon whether your home country is an active financial contributor to LIS. If the  Access Eligibility chart indicates that you are subject to an individual user fee, and you wish to arrange payment, please contact admin@lisdatacenter.org.

Register to access the microdata »

Databases

LIS gathers and harmonises datasets from countries around the world and makes them available in two databases:

Luxembourg Income Study Database (LIS)
The Luxembourg Income Study Database is the largest available income database of harmonised microdata collected from multiple countries over a period of decades. The LIS datasets contain variables on market income, public transfers and taxes, household- and person-level characteristics, labour market outcomes, and, in some datasets, expenditures.

Luxembourg Wealth Study Database (LWS)
The Luxembourg Wealth Study Database is the first cross-national wealth database in existence. The LWS datasets include variables on assets and debt, market and government income, household characteristics, labour market outcomes and, in some datasets, expenditures and behavioural indicators.

Documentation
LIS maintains an extensive catalogue of documentation for each dataset it acquires. Some of the documentation is generic, and some is country- or dataset-specific. The documentation provides information such as the scope of the datasets included in the databases, characteristics of the original surveys, the rules of variable construction, variable availability (across datasets), and features of the institutions that correspond to the tax and transfer variables.

Researchers should carefully consult the documentation before conducting any empirical analyses.

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Related

Israel’s Gilded Age, by Paul Krugman (New York Times, March 16, 2015)