LabFam Individual Biographies (LIB) is an open science project aimed at harmonizing family, partnership, and employment histories from longitudinal databases of five countries: Australia (HILDA), Germany (SOEP), Switzerland (SHP), United Kingdom (BHPS and UKHLS), and the United States (PSID). It constructs spell data for individuals across three life dimensions:
fertility, which records the number and timing of births
partnership, which records the timing of union formation and union dissolution
employment, which collects data on employment spells and characteristics of the jobs held.
The project harmonizes major panel surveys worldwide, by enabling the study of family and employment transitions over the life course. To achieve this, it incorporates data not only from survey panel components but also from calendar modules and retrospective questionnaires. This approach allows for the reconstruction of respondents’ life histories with a higher level of detail, accounting for the timing of events that occur between survey waves.

Co-authors

Assistant Professor Beata Osiewalska; Assistant Professor Lucas van der Velde; Associate Professor Anna Matysiak, University of Warsaw