What institutional configurations influence fertility patterns across countries? While family policies feature prominently in previous explanations, this article highlights the importance of housing in shaping family formation decisions. Housing costs, determined by state and market factors,...

The Great Recession has increased concerns over the fairness of the distribution of wealth and income in many societies. Using data on eight advanced economies (Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Slovakia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and United States) between 2007 and 2010, I show how the Great...

We examine the poverty rates and the income configurations among Japan and the LIS countries. The LIS countries are Germany, Italy, the UK, Denmark, the US, and Taiwan. We divide household including elderly into five types: living alone, couples only, living with their married children, living...

This brief chapter introduces researchers to the possibilities for subnational research using the harmonized data sets made available via the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) (http://www.lisproject.org). We first offer a brief overview of the LIS and discuss specific challenges for subnational...

This paper addresses the question of the institutional flexibility of three major European welfare states. Using Data from the second and fifth wave of the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), we measure first how effectively the German, British and Italian welfare state have responded changes in...