Cross-national differences in outcomes are often analysed using regression analysis of multilevel country datasets, examples of which include the ECHP, ESS, EU-SILC, EVS, ISSP, and SHARE. We review the regression methods applicable to this data structure, pointing out problems with the...

This paper demonstrates how quality of life can be measured by plain text in a representative survey, the German Socio Economic Panel Study (SOEP). Furthermore, the paper shows that problems that are difficult to monitor, especially problems like the state of the European Union, long-term...

I address four topics: how our capacities to monitor poverty in Europe have improved substantially over recent decades; how progress on EU poverty reduction has been disappointing and why this has been; conceptual and measurement issues; and the future direction of EU-level anti-poverty actions....

This paper scrutinizes the conventional wisdom about trends in UK income inequality and also places contemporary inequality in a much longer historical perspective. We combine household survey and income tax data to provide better coverage of all income ranges from the bottom to the very top. We...

A particular shortcoming of panel surveys is potential bias arising from selective attrition. Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) we analyze potential artifacts (level, structure, inequality of income) by comparing results from two independently drawn panel...

Based on the hypothesis that microdata are of crucial importance for internationally competitive economic research and scientific advice in economic and social policy, the authors develop various proposals for an improved data supply for empirical work in Germany. Present shortcomings are mainly...

To measure income inequality with right censored (topcoded) data, we propose multiple imputation for censored observations using draws from Generalized Beta of the Second Kind distributions to provide partially synthetic datasets analyzed using complete data methods. Estimation and inference...

Although the majority of research on US income inequality trends is based on public-use March CPS data, a new wave of research using IRS tax return data reports substantially higher levels of inequality and faster growing trends. We show that these apparently inconsistent estimates are largely...

This paper provides a self-contained introduction to the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), concentrating on aspects relevant to analysis of the distribution of household income. I discuss BHPS design features and how data on net household income are derived. The BHPS net household income...

Estimates of UK income inequality trends differ substantially according to whether estimates are based on household survey data (used for official statistics) or tax return data (used in the top incomes literature). We reconcile differences in variable definitions and combine survey and tax...