5th IZA Labor Statistics Workshop: The Measurement of Incomes, Living Costs and Standards of Living

  • December 2023

    G²LM|LIC & BREAD Conference on Development Economics

    Nairobi, Kenya

    The IZA/FCDO Gender, Growth and Labor Markets in Low-Income Countries Programme (G²LM|LIC) and the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD) are pleased to announce a joint Conference on Development Economics .The conference will consist of presentations of advanced stage research by senior or junior researchers, and presentations of early stage research by junior researchers.

  • January 2024

    IZA/FCDO ONLINE Development Economics Course

    Online

    This course addresses the question of why fundamentally equal humans living in different countries enjoy very different standards of living. The aim of this course is to make the very latest research in economics on these issues accessible to anyone who is sufficiently curious about it. It is modeled after the award-winning undergraduate development course at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and, like its model, it is entirely based on research articles.

5th IZA Labor Statistics Workshop: The Measurement of Incomes, Living Costs and Standards of Living
July 20, 2022 - July 22, 2022
Submission Deadline April 15, 2022
Notification Deadline May 15, 2022


Organizers
Katharine G. Abraham (University of Maryland and IZA)
Susan N. Houseman (Upjohn Institute and IZA)

Keynote Speaker
Bruce Meyer (University of Chicago), "The Geographical Adjustment of Poverty Thresholds"

About the Workshop
A central concern for economic policymakers around the world is the standard of living enjoyed by their country’s population. Living standards depend on many factors, including workers’ wages and hours, the availability of jobs, living costs, and the adequacy of social insurance programs and the social safety net. Living standards for those at the bottom of the income distribution are a particular concern. This focus reflects concerns about mismatch between job requirements and workforce skills, the adequacy of the wages paid to low skill workers, and shifts in the labor market towards more precarious work arrangements. In developed countries with an aging population, the maintenance of living standards in retirement is another significant policy concern. Even within countries, incomes often vary significantly across geographic areas. Whether geographic differences in income translate into geographic differences in living standards, however, depends among other things on the variation across areas in living costs and local amenities. Over the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has raised new concerns about living standards, particularly for less skilled workers and workers in the developing world.

The purpose of the 2022 workshop of IZA’s “Labor Statistics” program area is to bring together senior and junior researchers to discuss their recent empirical research related to incomes, living costs, and standards of living. Among other possible topics, papers of interest might present new measurement approaches or evidence regarding:
  • Trends in job quality
  • The measurement of poverty and trends in poverty over time
  • Differences in living costs and living standards across demographic and income groups
  • Geographic differences in living costs and living standards
  • Drivers of inequality in living costs and living standards
  • Changes in living costs and living standards during the COVID pandemic
Strong preference will be given to papers that have an explicit measurement focus or that develop or make use of novel data - including data from surveys, administrative records, linked data sets, or proprietary sources - to produce better measurements or fill data gaps related to the workshop topic while addressing substantive questions.

Submission
Researchers interested in participating should submit a full paper or extended abstract by April 15, 2022. Notification of acceptances will be provided by May 15, 2022.

Itt is expected that the submitter will also be the presenter of the paper.

Workshop sessions tentatively will be scheduled from 16:00 to 19:00 Central European Summer Time each day of the workshop, which equates to 10:00 to 13:00 Eastern Daylight Time and 7:00 to 10:00 Pacific Daylight Time. Invited authors are expected to participate in the entire 3-day workshop.
read more