The Luxembourg Consumption Study (LCS): Feasibility and First Steps

The purpose of this report is to assess the feasibility of establishing a Luxembourg Consumption Study (LCS) database, which would serve as a consumption-focused counterpart to the existing Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) and Luxembourg Wealth Study (LWS) databases. The proposed LCS would, like its predecessors, act as a repository of harmonized microdata across multiple countries and time periods, including one or more standardized welfare indicators that are comparable across surveys. The focus on consumption would add an important dimension to the analysis of living standards in LIS core countries, and it would create common ground between areas of the world that subscribe to different monetary welfare indicators. The first section of the report examines the feasibility of creating a repository of harmonized household-level consumption data that enables comparisons across low-, middle-, and high-income countries. The second section of the report assesses the impact of variations in the definition of the consumption aggregate—specifically, differences in the estimation of consumption flows for owner-occupied dwellings and durable goods—on key poverty estimates, with a particular focus on poverty profiles.