Family assets are playing an increasingly greater role in buffering life uncertainties, as rich economies have experienced a shift of risk from the State to the household, on account of greater job insecurity and reduced social expenditure. Population ageing is also shifting the weight in life-cycle income from labour earnings to capital income and pension transfers. The macroeconomic effects of rising household debt and rapid changes in housing prices are often at the centre of the policy debate.
As aggregate information at the country level is seldom adequate to investigate these issues, there is a need for micro-data on household finance that can be compared across countries. This task has now been initiated by the Luxembourg Wealth Study (LWS), a project launched in 2003 by central banks, statistical agencies and research institutes from ten countries: Austria, Canada, Cyprus, Finland, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. The LWS archive contains standardised household-level data on wealth holdings, family and adult characteristics, income and consumption data, derived from existing data sources.
This conference marks the end of the experimental project. The database is to be released to the scientific community in November 2007. More information on the LWS project and how to access the data is available at the Luxembourg Income Study website.
Organizing Committee
Andrea Brandolini (Banca d’Italia) and Timothy Smeeding (Syracuse University, USA).
Local contact persons
Alessandra Piccinini – alessandra.piccinini@bancaditalia.it
Carlo Muscariello – carlo.muscariello@bancaditalia.it
