Events

Workshops

  • 2023 (LIS)2ER workshop: “Housing Policy and Wealth Inequality”

    • LIS and LISER convened the fourth international scientific workshop in the realm of the (LIS)2ER initiative on “Housing Policy and Wealth Inequality”. This year’s workshop was organised in collaboration with the University of Luxembourg’s PROPEL (PROactive Policymaking for Equal Lives) project, which studies the causes and consequences of housing inequality, and is funded by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR).
    The workshop took place on 28-29 November 2023 at the Luxembourg University, Belval Campus.
    For detailed information about the workshop, please visit this page.

  • 2022 (LIS)2ER workshop: “Inflation, energy prices and tax policy: Effects on consumption and welfare”

    • Inflation has recently reached levels that have not been seen in many industrialized countries for decades. Spikes in energy prices, notably, raised concern about the livelihoods of families living on a tight budget. In this context, the 2022 (LIS)2ER workshop on policies to fight inequality—organized annually by the LIS Cross-national Data Center and LISER—aims to discuss research on inequality and distributive impacts of exposure to price variations.
    The workshop took place from Thursday 1st December (mid-day) through Friday 2nd December (mid-afternoon) in the Maison des Sciences Humaines, in Esch-sur-Alzette.

    Organizing Committee: Teresa Munzi (LIS) – Eugenio Peluso (LISER) – Petra Sauer (LIS, LISER) – Denisa Sologon / Jules Linden (LISER) – Philippe Van Kerm (LISER, University of Luxembourg).
    For detailed information about the workshop, please visit this page.

  • 2021 (LIS)2ER Workshop: “Policies to fight inequality: The case of family policy”

    • In this workshop we addressed “The Case of Work-life Reconciliation and Family Policies”, a theme which lies at the intersection of the labour market, families and households and early years of child development. Family policies are crucial in easing the often-competing responsibilities between work and family when young children are present. Acknowledging the diversity of policies and research studying the how, why, and what of these entitlements this workshop will focus on two interrelated family policies: provision of care for young children and parental leave. It discussed inequalities as causes and consequences at three levels: inequalities in access due to eligibility rules, inequalities in use due to (un)affordability of the right, and unintended consequences of the given right. Against this background, this workshop aimed to offer a space to discuss novel insights on inequalities related to work-life reconciliation policies, to present LIS data as source for comparative research, and provide scholars whose work captures inequalities within the scope of work-life reconciliation policies with an opportunity to unite and exchange ideas.
    The workshop took place from Thursday November 25th mid-day through Friday November 26th mid-afternoon. It consisted of 8 invited contributions. Thursday evening, a keynote lecture was delivered by Rense Nieuwenhuis (Stockholm University). A policy roundtable, lead by Margaret O’Brian (UCL), took place Friday early afternoon.

    Organising Committee:Petra Sauer (LIS, LISER), Marie Valentova (LISER), Philippe Van Kerm (LISER, University of Luxembourg), and Merve Uzunalioglu (LISER, UCL).
    For detailed information about the workshop, please visit this page.

  • 2020 (LIS)2ER Workshop: “The Distributional Effects of Higher Education Expansion”

    • In November 2020 Philippe Van Kerm, Daniele Checchi and Petra Sauer hosted the first international workshop in the realm of the (LIS)2ER initiative. The workshop took place virtually from Thursday November 12th afternoon through Friday November 13th lunchtime. Its aim was to gather insights from different fields in the social sciences dealing with the societal, economic and political causes and consequences of HE expansion. We had a great combination of six presentations by Jo Blanden (University of Surrey), Louis Chauvel (University of Luxembourg), Emily Murphy (University of Luxembourg), Golo Henseke (UCL), Irina Gewinner (University of Luxembourg), Frederick de Moll (University of Luxembourg), Krzysztof Czarnecki (Poznan University) and Petra Sauer (LIS, LISER) covering topics such as social mobility, returns to education, international student mobility and HE policy.

    Organising Committee: Petra Sauer (LIS, LISER), Philippe Van Kerm (LISER, University of Luxembourg), and Daniele Checchi (LIS, University of Milan).
    For detailed information about the workshop, please visit this page.

Past seminars on ‘Inequality, mobility and wealth concentration’

  • May 3rd 2023

    • Presenter: Fabian T. Pfeffer (Director, Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics, University of Michigan)
    Title of presentation: The Demography of Rising Wealth Inequality
    Abstract of presentation: We determine the independent contribution of several demographic trends to rising U.S. wealth inequality over the last three decades. Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances from 1989 through 2019 and novel decomposition techniques, we show that rapid growth in wealth inequality and increasing wealth concentration at the top coincided with important changes in the demographic composition of the country but that the two are not directly related. However, the shifts in the wealth distribution among demographic groups, in particular the move of households with less education and non-elderly households away from the middle of the distribution, explain much of the observed overall growth in inequality. Part, but not all, of these demographic contributions to rising wealth inequality operate through their contributions to rising income inequality.

  • May 10th 2023

    • Presenter: Alexandra Killewald (Department of Sociology, Harvard University )
    Title of presentation: For Richer: Marriage and Wealth
    Abstract of presentation: Marriage is widely considered to benefit individuals’ economic well-being, including their net worth. Yet establishing the role of marriage in wealth generation is complicated by the dynamic and reciprocal nature of marriage and wealth: marriage is both the result of prior wealth and a potential determinant of future wealth. In this paper, we use data from the NLSY79 and marginal structural models that account for these dynamic selection processes to estimate the effect marital histories on midlife wealth for American men and women.

  • May 17th 2023

    • Presenter: James E. Foster (Carr Professor, George Washington University Research Associate, OPHI, Oxford Visiting Professor, LSE)
    Title of presentation: Analysing intergenerational mobility with oriented measures and mobility curves
    Abstract of presentation: This seminar studies oriented measures of intergenerational mobility that differentiate between upward and downward mobility, including headcount ratios that give the incidence of upward (or downward) movements and mobility gaps that gauge the average gain (or loss). We define oriented mobility curves that graphically indicate when mobility comparisons are unambiguous and unanimity partial orderings generated by axiomatically defined classes of oriented measure.

Outreach activities

  • ESPAnet Stream 2020

    • Philippe Van Kerm, Daniele Checchi and Petra Sauer organised a stream for the 2020 ESPAnet (The European Network for Social Policy Analysis) conference on “Fighting Inequality and Poverty: Measuring Policy Impacts Within and Across Countries”. Due to the pandemic, the conference was downsized and the stream was converted into a small PhD workshop with 6 presentations which we hosted together with Nadine Schoeneck-Voss (Hochschule Niederrhein) and David S. Byrne (Durham University).

  • IARIW 2022 special session

    • Petra Sauer and Philippe Van Kerm organised the special session “Fighting Inequality and Poverty: Exploiting within and across Country Variations to Evaluate Distributive Impacts of Policy” at the 37th edition of the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth (IARIW) General Conference, hosted by the National Statistical Institute of Luxembourg (STATEC).
    For the detailed program and links to the six contributed papers see here.