A Multi-Country Database of Income Dynamics and Inequality

This awards funds the construction of an open access database that will include information on earnings inequality, income volatility, economic mobility, and income dynamics for a large number of countries over time. The data facility provides rich information on individual-level earnings over time from government administrative records. The data are harmonized to allow for comparisons between countries and over time. The goal is to spur research on the factors determining inequality, economic mobility and economic risk along with research testing theories about the reasons for different levels and paths in the evolution of earnings distribution across countries.

Measuring patterns of income inequality over time, between groups, and across countries requires reliable microdata on income distributions. The database funded by this award has several distinguishing features. The first is the longitudinal dimension. By providing data on each country over time researchers will be able to study the dynamics of individual and household earnings. This includes work on earnings volatility, the size, persistence, and original of individual income shocks, and income mobility within age cohorts and across generations. The second distinguishing feature is the administrative nature of the data. The size of each national data set allows granular analyses of the heterogeneity behind the phenomena of interest, including a wide range of individual demographic characteristics.