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After attending the 27th IARIW General Conference in Stockholm (August
2002), where some research results were presented on trends of wealth
inequality in five countries, it was obvious to Andrea Brandolini that
wealth comparability was lagging far behind income comparability (data are
available for fewer countries, data collection procedures differ widely
and the very same definitions of the wealth components are far from being
homogeneous across nations).
A meeting was called to discuss the feasibility of developing the
Luxembourg Wealth Study (LWS). Held on July 16, 2003 in
Luxembourg, 22 experts on wealth and data collection participated in a
meeting to explore the possibility of constructing cross-national
comparable datasets from existing data, establishing a network of
producers of microdata on household worth, and the production of
guidelines for data producers, similar to the Canberra Handbook. After
extensive discussion concerning data availability and funding
possibilities,
the group concluded that the Luxembourg Wealth Study was a worthwhile
project.
LIS hired
Eva Sierminska to work within the LIS offices in Luxembourg
exclusively on the LWS project.
In January 2005 a conference on the
"Construction and Usage of Comparable Microdata on Household Wealth: the
Luxembourg Wealth Study" was held in Perugia, Italy, hosted by the Bank of
Italy. In July 2005 preliminary results of the harmonization of the
initial datasets were analyzed and presented at the First Meeting of the
Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
In August 2006, the first
results for the full set of countries were presented at the first plenary
session of the IARIW Conference in Joensuu, Finland on “Issues in the
Measurement of Wealth”. A short paper describing LWS has been published in
the OECD Newsletter No.31 (May 2006) and in the Journal of
Economic Inequality 4(3): December 2006.
The
Beta version of the dataset has been made accessible to LWS partner
institutions in Summer 2006. It has been updated and corrected in November
2006 and again in February 2007.
On
December 14-15, 2006 we held a LWS Technical Conference in Luxembourg.
The aim of this workshop was to examine the database, prepare the final
documentation and institutional detail, and present the first results in a
comparable context by the LWS Partners.
The conference focused on:
(1) methodological issues
regarding the database (response rates, imputations, other issues); (2)
comparison of LWS definitions of wealth aggregates to nationally preferred
aggregates;
(3) institutional issues regarding wealth holding,
accumulation and transfer in the country;
(4) national trends if
available;
(5) current research and policy issues in each nation.
Final ‘Beta phase’ conference
(Rome, July 5-7, 2007)
Programme and Papers
Technical Conference (Luxembourg- December 14-15,
2006)
"The
LWS database: First reflections on the β-version "
Papers and
PowerPoint presentations
Conference (Perugia
- January 27-29, 2005)
"Construction and Usage of Comparable
Microdata on Household Wealth:
The Luxembourg Wealth Study"
Papers and PowerPoint presentations
Pictures
Development of
Project:
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