The Expanded Cross-National Equivalent File: HILDA Joins Its International Peers

Abstract

Cross-national research using large representative datasets is still relatively new. It has only been over the last 25 years that harmonised cross-sectional data have become available to the international research community, primarily via the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS). The LIS data allow researchers to measure the effects of alternative social policies and to compare socio-economic characteristics of different countries’ populations from a cross-sectional perspective. It is only in the last decade that several ex post harmonised country panel datasets have become widely available. Yet these panel studies have already been recognised as important sources of data that analysts need in order to investigate more fully levels of, and differences in, the relative economic well-being of the residents of different countries. Researchers are using panel data to analyse cross-national patterns of income mobility, poverty dynamics, and employment duration. They are also increasingly turning to panel data to compare and analyse cross-national differences in, and determinants of, individual and population health.