Millenials’ Economic Prospects Revealed Through LIS Data

Millenials’ Economic Prospects Revealed Through LIS Data

This week The Guardian published the first story of an in-depth series about the economic prospects of Millennials, based on exclusive data from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) at the Cross-National Data Center, which is directed by Professor Janet Gornick (Political Science/Sociology).

The feature, “Revealed: the 30-Year Economic Betrayal Dragging Down Generation Y’s Income,” examines how debt, unemployment, globalization, home prices, and shifting demographics are lowering the incomes of individuals born between 1980 and the mid-1990s, also known as Generation Y.

The story has already been viewed by more than 1 million readers, according to Guardian editors. The series will run for 11 days.

A team from LIS worked with The Guardian to produce the data needed for the feature, using a model that LIS had developed for The New York Times’ Upshot columns.

The Guardian also ran a companion story on the project and the role of LIS: “How We Revealed the Predicament of Generation Y.”

“The old quarter of the capital of Luxembourg: the country’s best-kept secret is its income data center,” the article notes. “[LIS] does what it says on the tin, only in a more thorough fashion than any other similar data repository in the world. The center, founded more than 30 years ago, hosts the world’s largest income database, with hundreds of datasets from 46 countries from as early as 1967.”

Gornick is also the director of the Graduate Center’s outpost of LIS, known as the LIS Center. LIS is a nonprofit microdata archive, research institute, and center for training in cross-national comparative research.