ISSUE 4 February 2015

InGRID in brief

The InGRID infrastructure wants to support the social science community in ways other-wise impossible by integrating: 1. data archives/collections that have already

been specialising in integrating national data: the LIS data centre in relation to income data and the CED institute spe-cialising in European census micro-data;

2. existing EU-wide databases and indicator collections of relevant national institutions and policies (for example developed by SOFI in Sweden and AIAS in Amsterdam);

3. new data efforts or projects especially in the field of working conditions and job quality: the WageIndicator project, the MEADOW approach for organisation pan-els, ...;

4. innovative ways to order and analyse data collected by official data providers (EU-SILC, the surveys of the European Foun-dation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, national socio-eco-nomic panels and working conditions sur-veys) among others;

5. standards for harmonisation of question-naires, classifications and policy indicators;

6. simulation facilities to enhance statistical quality and model impacts of policies (EUROMOD).

InGRID is an EU FP7 project built around a research infrastructure. A European research infrastructure is a facility or platform that pro-vides the scientific community with resources and services to conduct top-level research in their respective fields. In plain words: it is about ‘facilitating’ research.

The InGRID infrastructure is connected to the social sciences community that wants to make an evidence-based contribution to the EU2020 policy target of inclusive growth. More broadly defined, this research commu-nity is focusing on social in/exclusion, vulne-rability-at-work and related policies from a European comparative perspective. It is about poverty research, labour studies, policy analysis and social statistics. Key tools in this social science research are all types of data: earnings statistics, administrative social data, labour market data, surveys on quality of life or working conditions, and policy indicators.

Expert workshops and training schools are organised. Visiting grants are awarded to researchers to travel to one of the InGRID expertise centres. Research is done to opti-mise the European social science data and analytical tools on income, quality of life, job quality and related policies.

Contents

InGRID in brief 1

Editorial 2

InGRID news 3

InGRID events 4

Data in the picture 8

Community news 10

Visiting grants 11

Calendar 2015 14

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Editorial: inclusive growth as economic strategy

Europe is not in good shape. A very difficult recovery from the financial and economic crisis, continued budget-ary austerity, widening inequalities and high unemployment lead to fundamental doubts about our policy strate-gies (see figure). These are maybe not always situated at the political level, but certainly at the level of the vot-ing public (for example the recent political success of radical views).

Source: IAGS report 2015 (http://www.iags-project.org/documents/iags_report2015.pdf)

As a consequence interest is growing and should be growing in the notion of ‘inclusive growth’. This concept has already been embraced by the European Union in its EU2020 Strategy. The concept originates from devel-opment theory and it stresses ‘growth that generates decent jobs, gives opportunities to all segments of society - especially excluded groups - and distributes the income and non-income gains from prosperity more equally across society.’ In a report on inclusive growth, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Devel-opment (OECD) (2012) identifies three problems which even the record levels of growth of the 1990s and decade of 2000s failed to tackle: poverty, unemployment and inequality. These findings highlight the need to address the quality of growth, in particular to improve its inclusiveness.

InGRID is a distributed infrastructure that wants to make a considerable contribution in facilitating research on these matters of inclusive growth in Europe. Observing the current rising interest in matters of inequality, pov-erty and inclusiveness within political economist thinking, it is certainly of key importance for our network to look closer and pay more attention to these changing perspectives in economics. A first step in this regard will be the satellite event that we organise at the forthcoming NTTS conference in Brussels. Indicators and statistics of inclusive growth will be discussed by among others a contribution from OECD.

At this conference we present also interim results of a mapping survey that we are organising about the future demands and challenges of our research infrastructure. We kindly invite recognised experts in the field to par-ticipate in this survey. More than 400 persons already responded. The call to participate is still open and can be found here: http://www.inclusivegrowth.be/news/News/news93.

If not already participated, we are still looking forward to your opinions!

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InGRID news

Satellite event on the InGRID project at the NTTS conference Evidence-based contributions to the Europe 2020 policies of inclusive growth - from the viewpoint of new trends and evolutions in related official statistics 13 March 2015, Brussels, Belgium

Chairs: Guy Van Gyes (HIVA-KU Leuven, Belgium, co-ordinator InGRID) & Ralf Münnich (University of Trier, Germany)

Participants will be invited to discuss the future chal-lenges and opportunities of this European research infra-structure focusing on policy strategies of inclusive growth from the viewpoint of new trends and evolutions in related official statistics. The base input to start this discussion will be the results of an expert Delphi survey. Other par-ticular issues will be tackled by specific paper presenta-tions of InGRID members.

Registration to the event can be done online via http://www.cros-portal.eu/content/registration-ntts-2015

Programme Introduction to the InGRID project Futuring a European research infrastructure on

inclusive growth Presentation of the Delphi Survey results (Lise

Szekér & Guy Van Gyes – HIVA-KU Leuven, Belgium) Comments by discussant (Emilio Di Meglio – Euro-

pean Commission – Eurostat Unit F4 'Quality of life') and plenary discussion

Poverty measures for ‘local’ comparison: statistical problems and empirical results in OECD countries (Achille Lemmi – Department of Economics and Statis-tics, University of Sienna, Italy)

The OECD Inclusive Growth Indicator: a long time-series analysis (Fabrice Murtin, OECD)

EUROMOD: new developments and future (Holly Sutherland – ISER, University of Essex, UK)

Indicators of collectively-agreed wages in the Euro-zone: a quality report for ten countries (Guy Van Gyes & Sem Vandekerckhove – HIVA-KU Leuven, Belgium)

More information http://www.inclusivegrowth.be/news/News/news85

InGRID side event on the final WEBDATANET conference Collecting online data on job titles, descriptions, task and required skills 26-28 May 2015, Salamanca, Spain

The WEBDATANET conference aims to bring to-gether researchers and experts throughout the world to exchange research on topics related to web-based data collection and analysis methods.

InGRID partner AIAS is involved in this network and organises an InGRID side event during this conference.

The internet challenges new approaches to col-lect data on job titles, job descriptions, job tasks, and required skills. Employers and job boards post widely job vacancies. Professional organisa-tions post job descriptions and tasks and duties within their occupational domain. Web surveys allow for testing occupation-specific job content or tasks. Collecting this widely available information basically means collecting largely unstructured text that needs to be identified either as a job title, a required skill, a task description or a job task. Job titles are used at various levels of aggre-gation. Whereas employers typically ask for very specific job titles, educational institutions qualify for broad occupational titles. This variety of job titles needs to be classified into occupational classification systems in order to enrich occupa-tional data in surveys. Moreover, the open text used in surveys to invite respondents reporting their job titles requires semantic matching tech-niques in order to classify these job titles into classification systems.

Conference website: http://webdatanet.cbs.dk/index.php/component/

content/article/176

InGRID side event: http://webdatanet.cbs.dk/images/SESSIONSKATJA/

keatijdens.pdf

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InGRID events

The programmes, presentations and pictures of these events can be found on the InGRID website: http://www.inclusivegrowth.be/events

Past events

ERCIM conference: talk of Nikos Tzavidis

Nikos Tzavidis (University of Southampton, UK) gave an invited talk at the ERCIM conference in Pisa (6-8 December 2014). His presentation was on novel small area methodologies that are being developed as part of the InGRID project and used for supporting the poverty pillar of the InGRID project.

The past six months have been very busy months for the InGRID partners. No less than six events were organised. The four summer and winter schools hosted over 100 participants. Next to lectures given by distinct senior researchers and more hands-on (PC Lab) sessions, par-ticipants were given the opportunity to present their work and to engage in critical but helpful discussions with each other.

Summer school @ AIAS, University of Amsterdam

In July 2014, AIAS started the summer with a training week on the ‘Gender pay gap revisited’. Current research activities in measuring, ana-lysing, and comparing the gender pay gap were presented and discussed. Senior researchers gave lectures in the morning, and in the after-noons all participants followed methodological workshops in PC labs.

Summer school @ University of Pisa

The University of Pisa/Department of Economics and Management organised a summer school on ‘Poverty and social exclusion in three dimen-sions: multidimensional, longitudinal and small area estimation’ at the end of July 2014. This event offered an introduction to the key concepts and an up-to-date survey of traditional and new methods for estimating poverty and social exclu-sion, with a special focus to the local level, as well as the most recent multidimensional meth-ods of the dynamics of poverty.

In September 2014 the summer school on ‘Inter-generational and life-course transmission of poverty’ was organised by the University of Bremen. It focused on three different but closely interlinked thematic fields within poverty re-search: poverty across the life-course, income mobility and poverty transmission within and across generations, and intergenerational mobil-ity and welfare states. The summer school was

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concluded with a keynote on poverty trends in Germany and demonstrated different ways to explore poverty dynamics with longitudinal data.

Summer school @ University of Bremen

In November 2014, CEPS (Brussels) organised a 3-day winter school on ‘Intergenerational inequalities’. This win-ter school aimed at analysing the most pressing issues within the concept of inequality in a cross-country com-parative way as well as through country case studies such as the relation between inequality and welfare state, generational welfare contract and inequality and educa-tion. Other topics were the relationship between inequali-ties and corruption, the factors contributing to the suc-cess/failure of certain policies targeting immigrant inte-gration in Europe, and the link between the financial sector and the dynamic of income inequalities.

Further, two expert workshops were organised, bringing together key experts in the respective fields across Europe.

In October 2014, the expert workshop on ‘Using web crawling data in identifying new jobs and new skills’ was organised by CEPS in Brussels. A group of experts dis-cussed the framework, structure, challenges, and recent developments in web crawling/spider methodologies that are used in vacancy data to analyse skills and compe-tences in job advertisements. Further, guidelines and practical/methodological information was gathered on how to use web crawling data.

Expert workshop @ SOFI, University of Stockholm

The expert workshop on ‘Development and dissemination of social policy indicators’ was held in November 2014 in Stockholm and organ-ised by SOFI. It was co-financed by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation and the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare. The main objective was to share knowledge and initiate new co-operation between research infrastructures. Central topics during the conference were mapping of existing data resources covering central social policy programme areas of welfare states, validity and reliability of social policy data, new innovative ways to collect data as well as dissemination and access strategies to data infrastructures.

Expert workshop @ SOFI, University of Stockholm

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Upcoming events

One of the main activities of the project is the organisation of 12 expert workshop and 18 training events focusing on key issues of the research domains of the InGRID project. The summer/winter schools aim to provide training for early-stage researchers, PhD students, post-docs and policy practitioners/experts. These training events focus on conceptual and methodological issues within the research fields of InGRID. The overall perspective is European comparative research. Experts are welcomed in the InGRID workshops to discuss among other key methodological and conceptual issues, indicator building questions, visualisation prob-lems, improvements in simulations, and dis-semination methods. Next to knowledge ex-change, these workshops also give input on or feedback to the research activities of InGRID.

Expert workshops and summer or winter schools are among others organised on ad-vanced poverty research, such as protocol development for hard-to-reach groups, material deprivation dynamics, surveying hard-to-identify groups, or IPOLIS. On the other hand, events are organised on the gender pay gap, web crawling data, quality of working life and vulner-abilities. The social policy analysis pillar organ-ises expert workshops and winter/summer schools on social policy indicators and the fur-ther development of EUROMOD. In addition, six training events are organised on the use of EUROMOD and micro-simulations.

Calls for events are frequently launched on the project website and in Newsflashes. Candidates can apply by completing the online application form. Accepted participants will receive travel and subsistence reimbursement. Presentations and pictures of past events are available on the website.

More information http://www.inclusivegrowth.be/events

Calls for summer schools

Summer school on ‘Quality of working life and vulnerabilities’

This summer school takes place at CEE, at Noisy-Le-Grand near Paris, France from 1 until 5 June 2015. The aim is providing on the one hand a multidisciplinary perspective on the concept of quality of working life, on the other hand identifying links with vulnerable groups.

'Quality of working life' is preferred to the umbrella term 'quality of jobs' because it refers more explicitly to what is happening while at work. It is also preferred to 'quality of work' because it avoids the confusion between what is being produced and employees’ evaluation of their work experience. The concept of quality of working life (QWL) is broad as it is developed by different academic fields and used by a wide range of actors. Different approaches as proposed by sociology, economics, philosophy, ergono-mics, social psychology, management, epidemiology and political sciences will be considered during the summer school. This multidisciplinary perspective is expected to provide a broad approach of the concept in order to identify and measure the different dimensions of QWL as well as the vulnerabilities generated or discarded through working life.

Deadline for applications: 10 April 2015

Read the full call on http://inclusivegrowth.be/events/call20

Summer school on ‘Advanced poverty research: poverty and material deprivation dynamics’

This summer school is organised by the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER, formerly CEPS/INSTEAD) from 6 until 10 July 2015. It aims at providing an overview of the theoretical, methodological and data issues and challenges related to the measure-ment of financial poverty and material deprivation at the European Union (EU) level with special attention to longi-tudinal aspects. In particular, it will provide lectures on topics such as methodological and policy framework for EU indicators of poverty and deprivation, evolution of the income distribution, changes in poverty and material depri-vation in Europe during the Great Recession, pro-poor growth measurement and analysis of welfare dependence and social assistance dynamics. Methodological techni-ques to analyse the determinants of such trends and to

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conduct adequate variance estimation of longitudinal poverty and material deprivation indicators will also be covered.

Focus will be put on exploiting the EU Statistics on Income and Living conditions (EU-SILC), using both cross-sectional and longitudinal data and discussing strengths and weaknesses of the instrument. Other data sources may be used during some lectures. The central purpose of the programme is to enhance the ability of participants to analyse the dynamics of poverty and deprivation (theory and empirics). To this end, the summer school will also provide hands-on sessions.

Deadline for applications: 1 May 2015

Read the full call on http://inclusivegrowth.be/events/call23

Calls for expert workshops

Expert workshop on ‘Local statistics for decision making on well-being and vulnerability’

Organised by the University of Pisa, this expert workshop takes place from 15 until 17 June 2015 in Livorno, Italy.

The focus of the expert workshop will be on the production of local statistics on well-being and vulnerability and on the evaluation of poli-cies in favour of social cohesion, with the aim of analysing the interweaving of the local statistics and of the different policies with well-being. This will be done given the welfare systems operat-ing in Europe. Examples of local statistics are poverty indicators (e.g. the Laeken poverty indi-cators), (un)employment rates, subjective well-being indicators. Given the focus of the policies under consideration, these local indicators can be computed for subdomains of the population, such as children, women, households with two or more children.

The expert workshop will give insights on the instruments to assess the effectiveness of local actions favouring well-being, as investigated by several tools of applied research. They stem

from many contexts: definition of outcome indicators of poverty, vulnerability and well-being; examination of diverse patterns of welfare systems to focus on vulnerable groups and policies against poverty and social exclusion; evaluation of policies.

Deadline for applications: 15 March 2015

Read the full call on http://www.inclusivegrowth.be/events/call21

Expert workshop on ‘Research uses of high-precision census samples’

This expert workshop is organised by CED and takes place in Barcelona, Spain from 25 until 27 June 2015.

Inclusive growth has become one of the main priorities of the Europe 2020 Strategy. This strategy will shape the research agenda on poverty and living conditions in forthcoming years. Hence, there is an increasing need to improve ‘Poverty and living conditions’ research infra-structures in Europe. In this regard, the InGRID project was born to integrate and to innovate existing European social science research infrastructures. The Integrated European Census Microdata (IECM) initiative currently disseminates 57 censuses samples from 17 European countries. IECM supports the development of methodo-logies and data infrastructures to perform territorial analysis of poverty and living conditions, taking advantage of the high-precision and regional detail available in census data. However, the IECM contribution to InGRID is contingent upon up-to-date coverage and geographic detail of the IECM database.

This experts workshop aims to: encourage the participation of more countries in the

IECM project and to enhance the integration of 2010 round samples for countries already participating; address new issues such as comparability of register-

based and traditional censuses, harmonisation of census concepts and geography over time; examine the state of the art methodologies in small-area

estimates of poverty and living conditions derived from census micro-data.

Deadline for applications: 16 April 2015

Read the full call on http://inclusivegrowth.be/events/call22

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Data in the picture

LIS, cross-national data centre

LIS, the cross-national data centre in Luxem-bourg - formerly known as the Luxembourg Income

Study – is a non-profit institution regulated under Luxembourg law and govern-ed by an international board. LIS is organised into two offices. The main office, where all data production takes place, is in Luxem-bourg, and a satellite office is based at the Graduate

Centre of the City University of New York.

In addition to the permanent staff and affiliated graduate students, the LIS masthead now includes seven senior scholars, all university professors: Louis Chauvel and Conchita D’Ambrosio (in Lux-embourg), Markus Jäntti (in Sweden), Frank Cowell (in the UK), and Janet Gornick, Branko Milanovic and Paul Krugman (in New York).

While LIS’ mission and core work have not changed since its inception in 1983 – that is, to acquire and harmonise high-quality micro-datasets and to make them available to researchers around the world – LIS is constantly evolving and growing, as is its user community which currently numbers in the thousands.

LIS’ data holdings are organised into two data-bases. The longstanding Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) database, which is focused on income data, will soon contain over 300 datasets from more than 50 high- and middle-income countries. The smaller and newer Luxembourg Wealth Study (LWS) database contains micro-data on assets and debt. LWS now includes twenty datasets from twelve countries.

Extensive documentation for each dataset details technical aspects of the original survey, a record of the harmonisation process, and institutional infor-mation on tax and transfer programmes corre-sponding to the micro-data variables. To protect the confidentiality of the micro-data, both databases are

accessed only by registered users and via a remote-execution system, known as LISSY.

In addition to data production and provision, LIS offers a range of services and products, including user support, self-teaching packages, training workshops, a visiting scholar programme, and a pre- and post-doctoral scholars programme. LIS also provides standardised aggregate indicators, known as the Key Figures; these are available for all visitors to the LIS website.

Reports based on LIS data have appeared in books, journal articles and dissertations, and are often featured in the popular media. Each com-pleted study is published in the LIS Working Paper series, which currently numbers more than 675 pa-pers. The LIS website offers a Working Paper search engine, a complete set of abstracts, and most of the papers in full text.

The coming year – 2015 – will be a busy one! Dur-ing the next 12 months, LIS will: add many more datasets to the LIS database,

from approximately 2007, 2010, and 2013; expand and update the LWS database, adding

more countries and years, and introducing a new template; launch an entirely new, modernised, metadata

system; make available an expanded and updated web-

tabulator (online table-maker); revise its website; participate in the ECINEQ conference, to be held

in Luxembourg in July; expand leadership; continue to explore and design paths for

innovation and expansion; and move offices!

More information http://www.lisdatacenter.org/

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The CSB-MIPI database

The Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy at the University of Antwerp has a longstanding tradition in comparative welfare state and poverty research. It has paid special attention to assessing and tracking the adequacy of the social floor of the welfare state. Therefore, it has established the Centre for Social Policy Minimum Income Protection Indicator data-base (CSB-MIPI). The primary purpose of CSB-MIPI is to present valid and detailed information on the level and composition of minimum income pro-tection packages for workers, for people at working age not in work, and for the elderly. For workers, the focus is on the net incomes of minimum wage workers. For people not or no longer in work, the focus is on statutory social assistance entitlements for able-bodied persons or equivalent schemes. In all cases full account is taken of taxes, social secu-rity contributions, means-tested income supple-ments (such as housing allowances) as well as child benefits and child care costs. While the pri-

mary focus is on income levels, CSB-MIPI also contains information on conditionality requirements in social assistance, associated rights and in-kind benefits. The database contains information span-ning two decades. Information on net disposable incomes is available starting from 1992 for 15 EU countries. From 2001 on, CSB-MIPI covers all EU member states except Malta and Cyprus, plus Nor-way and 3 US States (Texas, Nebraska and New Jersey). In addition, there are yearly time series on the evolution of gross benefit levels for the 1990s and the 2000s. The most recent data collection refers to January 2012. The dataset derives from data collection through a network of national experts, partly expanding on earlier data collection efforts by Jonathan Bradshaw of the University of York and partly relying on the EUROMOD network. As illustrated in the figure below, the dataset can be used to track the adequacy of minimum income benefits (here expressed as a percentage of the 60% at-risk-of-poverty threshold), and to analyse changes to taxes and benefits that impact on the minimum social floor for a wide range of countries.

Source: CSB-MIPI Version 3/2013 (Van Mechelen, Marchal, Goedemé, Marx & Cantillon, 2011); Eurostat (2014)

For data access, please contact natascha.vanmechelen@uantwerpen.be or sarah.marchal@uantwerpen.be.

More information and related publications can be found at http://www.centrumvoorsociaalbeleid.be/index.php?q=node/3270/en

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Community news

Publication: Facing the crisis. The coping strategies of unemployed people in Europe

DG employment, social affairs and inclusion (27/11/2014)

This report explores how those households that are particularly exposed to poverty and long-term unem-ployment manage to deal with the blows dealt by the economic crisis. It asks the key questions: is unem-ployment in a period of crisis really the cause of spiralling breaks in social links, or can it

also be the start of a process of coping, based on strengthening those links? If so, to what extent? It draws on the findings of three studies, both quali-tatively and quantitatively.

It summarises a qualitative study led by Serge Paugam and a quantitative study, in which InGRID partner Anne-Catherine Guio (LISER, formerly CEPS/INSTEAD) has been involved together with Marco Pomati from Cardiff University and TNS.

The report is available online at http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=

738&langId=en&pubId=7729&type=2&furtherPubs=yes

Publication: Putting the fight against poverty and social exclusion at the heart of the EU agenda: a contribution to the mid-term review of the Europe 2020 Strategy

Hugh Frazer, Anne-Catherine Guio, Eric Mar-lier, Bart Vanhercke & Terry Ward

OSE Paper Series, Research Paper No. 15, October 2014, 65 p.

With poverty and social exclusion levels on the in-crease, there is a growing consensus that the social dimension of the Europe 2020 Strategy has been dis-appointing. Urgent action at EU and country level is required to rectify this if the EU objective of lifting at least 20 million of people out of poverty or social exclusion by 2020 is to be achieved. Deciding what changes need to be made in order to put the fight against poverty and social exclusion at the heart of the EU agenda is a key chal-lenge for the mid-term review of the Europe 2020 Strategy that is now under-way. In this joint contribution, five leading policy analysts examine the scale of the challenge as well as the underlying problems which need to be tackled and the measures which could be taken to do this.

More information http://www.ose.be/files/publication/

OSEPaperSeries/Frazer_Guio_Marlier_Vanhercke_Ward_2014_OseResearchPaper15.pdf

4th conference of the Regulating for Decent Work Network: developing and implementing policies for a better future at work

The Regulating for Decent Work (RDW) Network, organised by the International Labour Office (ILO), will have its 4th RDW conference in Geneva, Switzer-land, on 8-10 July 2015.

The 4th RDW conference will investigate key dimen-sions of the future of work. Papers are invited that focus on four thematic issues: worker protection: wages, hours, and the employment

relationship; income security in the era of widening inequality –

labour income, social protection, and well-being; labour market regulation and development – political

economy of policy reforms and their outcomes; and reaching out to vulnerable workers: voice, actions,

and the role of collective labour relations.

More information http://www.rdw2015.org/pages/info

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Visiting grants Throughout the project 13 InGRID part-ners offer free-of-charge transnational access to their data expertise centres. Via visiting grants of up to 20 working days, researchers can experiment with and work on leading European datasets within a scientific context of mutual exchange and cross-fertilisation. The InGRID data centres welcome both indi-vidual researchers and small research teams. It is encouraged to combine a visit with the attendance to an InGRID training event or expert workshop.

In total 10 calls for visiting grants will be launched, one every 4 months. Applying for a visiting grant can be done by filling in the online application form on the pro-ject website, providing a short description of the project and the potential activities during and benefits of a visit to one of InGRID’s data expertise centres.

With 5 calls passed, over 80 visiting grants are already awarded, in total for more than 900 visit days. Applicants come from 21 countries all across Europe, not solely from EU member states, but also from some of the associ-ated countries. The selection results from each call can be found on the InGRID website, as well as the experiences of the visitors and output following from their visits.

In the next two years of the InGRID project, we will continue with these visit-ing grants. More than 1,000 still available visit days will be awarded to European researchers within the field living condi-tions, poverty, working conditions, social statistics, and social policy research.

More information http://www.inclusivegrowth.be/visiting-

grants

Selection results and experiences of pre-vious visitors:

http://www.inclusivegrowth.be/visiting-grants/selection-results

New call for visiting grants

Visiting grants in brief

What is

offered?

Free-of-charge access and support to 11 leading data

centres

How long? Maximum 20 working days

For who? Academic researchers, policy practitioners

Working within EU member states or associated coun-

tries

Costs? Subsistence allowance & travel reimbursement

Deadline? 15 March 2015

How to

apply?

http://www.inclusivegrowth.be/visiting-grants/call19

BIGSSS, CeS & EMPAS - UBremen: Expertise in household panel data analysis on social inequality and social policy

LIS: Cross-national data centre

TÁRKI-POLC: Expertise in appliedquantitative social research, data collection and data archiving

IECM-CED: User's support and access toharmonised European Census Microdata

IRISS-LISER: Expertise in comparative analysis, poverty and inequality analysis, micro-simulation including micro-macro linkage

CSB-UA: Expertise in minimum incomeprotection analysis tools and micro-simulation modeling

SOFI-SU: Expertise in large-scalecomparative and institutional social policy analysis

CEE: Expertise for matched surveysemployers/employees, French surveysabout working conditions and risks

HIVA-KU Leuven: Expertise in indicators and comparative analysis about Quality of Work at EU level

AIAS - UvA: Working conditions, wagesand industrial relations databases

UNIPI-DEM: Expertise on model-basedsmall-area estimation andmultidimensional poverty analysis

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Experiences of visitors

Petroula Mavrikiou and Julijana Angelovska during their visit to HIVA-KU Leuven. For their project ‘A cross national study on the wage gap and inequalities between women and men’ they first attended the summer school organised by AIAS on the gender pay gap. Afterwards they combined a short visit to AIAS and a short visit to HIVA-KU Leuven to discuss their project with researchers in these institutes and make substantial progress with their analysis.

Timo Schmid visited S3RI for his project titled ‘Outlier robust small area estimation under spatial correlation’ and worked together with Dr. Nikos Tzavidis.

“During my visit different bootstrap estimation methods where tested under various scenarios. In particular, we investigated the sensitivity of the methods under spatial correlation. This gave some insights for proposing two bootstrap schemes which account for spatial correlation between the random effects. Afterwards, we tested the new methods with an illustrative application using busi-ness data that focuses on estimation of average labour costs in Italian provinces. The research offers prospec-tive methods for modelling small area means in the con-text of contamination in the data. The proposed ap-proaches are able to incorporate spatial patterns in the data in order to obtain more efficient estimators.”

Gennaro Punzo and Antonella Rocca were awarded a visiting grant to TÁRKI for their project ‘Profiles of in-equality and social vulnerability for sub-groups of popula-tion. A comparison between the Hungarian and Italian labour market’. Using the EU-SILC data they were able to make a comparison between Southern and Eastern countries of Europe in terms of income changes and ine-quality during the first years of global crisis. Preliminary findings show the crucial role of gender, education, expe-rience in labour market and employment status in deter-mining changes in personal earnings over time; more specifically, the results draw attention to the significant role of dynamic variables, such as the changes in em-ployment status (employee versus self-employed and vice-versa), employment contract (full-time versus part-time or permanent versus fixed-term contract) rather than other labour market functioning in shaping the partial fluctuations in the structure of personal incomes.

During her visit to SOFI, Marta Simões was able to take some steps forward in her project ‘The welfare state and economic performance: insights from the OECD coun-tries’:

“During the visit I achieved a more detailed understand-ing of the SPIN database concerning time and countries coverage, available indicators and associated coding. I carried out a preliminary analysis between unemploy-ment policy measures and economic growth. Taken as a whole the very preliminary explorative data analysis indi-cates that, since the welfare state is a mix of different programmes, with different rules across countries con-cerning eligibility, coverage, duration, etc., focusing on spending alone might not be very informative, especially as far as policy implications are concerned. The results also suggest that there might be differences in the short-term versus the longer term influence of the welfare state on economic performance that must be taken into con-sideration in order to arrive at more adequate and precise interpretations of the relationship.”

Working papers resulting from visits to InGRID data expertise centres: Paulo Brunori (visited ISER): EUROMOD working paper: Income taxation and equity: new dominance criteria and an

application to Romania (Brunori, Palmisano & Peragine, 2014) http://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/ research/publications/working-papers/euromod/em19-14

Michele Belloni (visited AIAS): Measurement error in occupational coding: an analysis on SHARE data (Belloni, Brugiavini, Meschi, & Tijdens, 2014)

http://www.inclusivegrowth.be/downloads/output/wp9-working-paper-tna-visit-michele-belloni-aias.pdf Giovanni Castiglioni (visited AIAS): Skills and occupational needs: labour market forecasting systems in Italy

(Castiglioni & Tijdens, 2014) http://www.inclusivegrowth.be/downloads/output/wp9-working-paper-tna-visit-giovanni-castiglioni.pdf

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Experiences of partners

Visitors at AIAS, University of Amsterdam By Kea Tijdens

InGRID partner University of Amsterdam/AIAS (Amsterdam Institute for Advanced labour Studies) has now hosted 13 visitors, and another visitor will be hosted in the coming months. Luckily, AIAS is well equipped for receiving visitors, because mostly there are at least a few non-natives in the institute, either as visiting guest or as a staff member. The InGRID visitors were either persons with acquainted to the AIAS staff affiliated with InGRID, or persons known from the InGRID workshops or summer schools.

In all cases, it was great to work with the visitors. Some visits have resulted in an AIAS working paper, other visits resulted in detailing the WageIndicator global data collection, for which one visitor specifically focused on the global data collection of educational categories. One visit has even resulted in a paper, which has been submitted to a refereed academic journal. All in all, the University of Amsterdam/AIAS is very satisfied with the opportunities offered through the InGRID visiting grants, and so have the visitors themselves, according to their evaluations.

Visitors at ISER, University of Essex By Cara McGenn

The ISER team members involved in the InGRID transna-tional access visits feel that these have been a real success so far and the feedback received to date supports this. From start to finish we strive to be well organised so that all those involved are clear on what is happening before, during and after their stay. When the TNA has first been approved we review the individual’s data requirements and ensure they have the correct access rights for a successful visit. We then make sure that they have the appropriate support available to them by giving them a ‘buddy’. The buddy is an ISER researcher who works in a similar field or has similar experience/interests as the visitor. They are available in ISER throughout the duration of the visit. They and the local TNA project administrator are the first points of contact for any questions or support that the visitor may need (this also includes non-technical questions about their surroundings, accommodation, social activities, etc.).

The visitors are located in our visitor office, which also holds up to 5 others (who are on various different visits/ schemes). This provides a fantastic chance to network and has also helped on a personal level e.g. having lunches together.

We are keen for the visitors to get involved in the ISER way of life and invite all to attend our general meetings and research seminars. We also ask them to present their project at internal ISER research meetings (this opportunity has been taken up by all visitors so far).

So far the visitors have all completed solo visits working on EUROMOD related projects. In February 2015 we are welcoming our first group visit (whose project will be using Understanding Society data). This will be an exciting change and we look forward to seeing how this works.

There have been a number of outputs produced by the TNA visitors using the information and skills developed during their stay in ISER, such as presentations and working papers.

Visitors at BIGSSS, University of Bremen By Florian Hertel

The transnational access provided through the InGRID project commenced early 2014 at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS) at the University Bremen, Germany. At BIGSSS, we provide access to and training with data of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) and the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Consistent with one prominent research focus at BIGSSS, TNA guests to Bremen study social inequality, poverty and the welfare state.

Eleana Velentza and Michal Brzezinski visited Bremen from 28 April to 9 May 2014. Coming from the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP) in Thessaloniki, Greece, Eleana visited Bremen to work with EU-SILC data on her project ‘The social profile of Greece in times of crisis: the multidimensional aspect of quality of life shaping living and working conditions in Greece’. Michal Brzezinski visited BIGSSS to study poverty in self-rated happiness in Germany. We provided Michal with assistance in using SOEP panel data to support him with his project ‘Poverty of subjective happiness in Ger-many’. From 16 November to 14 December 2014, Fran-cesca Tosi was hosted at BIGSSS. She worked on her PhD topic ‘Measuring multidimensional poverty: a framework for advanced countries’. The aim of her research is to under-stand how to best address the need for multidimensionality in poverty measurement by minimizing arbitrariness in normative choices and unambiguously informing empirical analyses. At BIGSSS, she had the opportunity to make use of the EU-SILC dataset to study changes in living standards from a multidimensional perspective in selected EU coun-tries from 2004 to 2011. For this purpose, we assisted her with handling the complicated EU-SILC data sets and advised her with the selection of suitable poverty indicators.

While providing our visitors with access to the data and assistance with studying it, all three of our guests contrib-uted to our own work at BIGSSS through stimulating intellectual discussion and academic exchange. The trans-national access has been a successful exchange pro-gramme so far and we are very committed to continue this splendid experience. We are looking forward to meet our new TNA guests in the coming months of 2015.

Calendar 2015

March 2015

13/03: InGRID satellite event on the NTTS con-ference 2015

15/03: Deadline applications call for visiting grants

April 2015

22-23/04: InGRID General Assembly Meeting

New call for visiting grants

Results of the 6th selection round visiting grants

June 2015

01-05/06: Summer school ‘Quality of working life and vulnerabilities’ @ CEE, Paris

15-17/06: Expert workshop ‘Local statistics for decision-making on well-being and vulnerabilities’ @ University of Pisa, Pisa

25-27/06: Expert workshop ‘Research uses of high-precision census samples’ @ IECM, CED, Bar-celona

July 2015

Next InGRID Newsletter

06-10/07: Summer school ‘Advanced poverty research: poverty and material deprivation dynamics’ @ LISER (formerly CEPS/INSTEAD), Luxembourg

August 2015

New call for visiting grants

Results of the 7th selection round visiting grants

September 2015

09-11/09: Expert workshop @ UEssex

October 2015

Expert workshop on family model tool @ UA

Winter school on micro-simulation @ LISER (for-merly CEPS/INSTEAD)

December 2015

New call for visiting grants

Results of the 8th selection round visiting grants