About CNEF

The CNEF Project has been continuously offering harmonized data for more than three decades. It exists and thrives because dedicated scholars from around the globe invest time, energy, and intellectual attention to harmonize, high quality panel data. They also use the data to produce insightful studies that use a cross-national research design. Each institute or university also supports the CNEF project directly (financially) or indirectly (allowing their researchers to work on CNEF-related tasks). The CNEF project is a true international collaboration between scholars worldwide. We rely on the CNEF community of scholars to maintain, improve, and expand researchers’ access to our harmonize panel data.  

We harmonize original panel data to save time of both experienced and inexperienced researchers who want to use a cross-national research design. One of our operational principles is to be as transparent as possible about whether and how we construct variables. We aim to produce data that get probed, discussed, and challenged through the peer review publication process. Because of that, we feel comfortable providing the data to inexperienced researchers.

However, we count on, indeed rely on, the scrutiny of experienced researchers who sometimes identify or offer ways to correct errors or refine our harmonization process. To that end, we provide researchers with the algorithms we use to harmonize the parent survey data.

We construct a few variables with data that the original data provider cannot share with the public (to comply with privacy regulations). In those cases, CNEF still provides the code so that researchers may see the algorithm and, with permission of the original data provider, check and improve our harmonization process.

We also adhere to a second and very important principle to make the CNEF data more useful. We provide a person-specific identifier variable that researchers can use to merge yet to be harmonized original parent survey data to the harmonized CNEF variables. In this way, cross-national researchers can focus their attention and energy on harmonizing new variables they want to create. They can use existing harmonized CNEF variables as controls.

If/when their harmonized variables pass peer review, we consider them for inclusion in the set of harmonized CNEF variables w

The CNEF project does more than harmonize existing data. Most of our partners create new variables that are critically important to cross-national research.  Primary among them are variables that document a household’s income before and after national (and sometimes local) governments tax the incomes and after the household has received transfer income from both public and private sources. These data are seldom available from the parent surveys. CNEF labels them as pre- and post-government income. They constitute a core part of the value CNEF adds for cross-national researchers. CNEF also includes household equivalence weights researchers commonly use to study the levels and evolution of income over time. We hope that the CNEF data prove useful for your research.

If you have questions, please email us at cnef@osu.edu.

What Countries Contribute to CNEF Data?

PSID (1970 - 2023)
Panel Study of Income Dynamics
Univesity Of Michigan

PSID is the longest running longitudinal household survey in the world. It began n 1968 with 18,000 individuals in over 5,000 households.
SOEP (1984 - 2023)
Socio-Economic Panel
German Institute for Economic Research (DIW)

German Socio-Economic Panel is a household panel dataset developed by the DIW Berlin. The study began in 1984. The SOEP has enriched the original sample with multiple refreshement samples of specific populations such as residents of former East Germany and people with very high incomes.
BHPS (1991 - 2008)
British Household Panel Survey
Institute for Social and Economic Research

BHPS fielded its first survey in 1991. It was fielded annually until 2008, with a sample that expanded from original residents of Great Britain to include residents from all of the United Kingdom.
SLID (1993 - 2009)
Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics
Statistics Canada

The SLID survey was fielded from 1993 until 2011. Statistics Canada created a SLID-CNEF with data from the 1993 to 2009 SLID waves.
RLMS-HSE (1995-2022)
Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey
Higher School of Economics

Russian survey of population began in 1992, and is currently run jointly by the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and "Demoscope", in collaboration with HSE in Russia.
We provide RLMS-HSE-CNEF Files from 1995 onward becuase of technical issues with early waves.
KLIPS (1998 - 2023)
Korean Labor & Income Panel Study
Korea Labour Institute

KLIPS survey first study launched in 1998 by Korean Labor Institute. It was the first Korean panel survey covering labor related issues, and aids in evaluations of labor market policies to this day. KLIPS is the only source of panel household data in Korea.
SHP (1999 - 2023)
Swiss Household Panel
FORS Center

Founded in 1999, Swiss Household Panel was created to observe the dynamics of population representations and changing living conditions in Switzerland. An annual panel study, SHP began with 5,000 household and almost 13,000 individuals, Over years, more that 6,000 household with over 15,000 individuals were added to the survey.
HILDA (2001 - 2024)
Household, Income Dynamics
Melbourne Institute

Australian household panel data set began in 2001 with almost 8,000 households with over 19,5000 individuals. HILDA collects information about lives and well-being of Australians, helping scientist answer questions about personal and economic well-being of Australians, their family life and labor market dynamics in Australia.
JHPS (2009 - 2022)
Japan Household Panel Survey
Keio University

A logical continuation of Keio Household Panel Study, Japan Household Panel Study began in 2009 to answer demand for household panel data of Japan as a whole. The survey began with 4000 respondents to help answer questions about education attainment, economic status, and health staus of the population.
UKHLS (2010 - 2018)
UK Household Longitudinal Study
Understanding Society

UKHLS fielded its first survey in 2010
with 40,000 households of more than 100,000 individuals that included 6,700 respondents to the 2008 BHPS survey. The Study examines behavioral, social and economic questions touching lives of UK population. The study includes  ethnic and immigrant minority boost samples to increase the sample size of different groups.
Citation of any publications, reports, or papers using CNEF data can be reported on the 'Bibliography' page of this website and should include the following citation:

In Text: "The Cross-National Equivalent File project is sponsored by the National Institute on Aging (Grant: 5-R01AG040213-10) and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Grants: 1-R03HD091871-01, 1-R03HD100924-01) and was conducted by The Ohio State University."

In Reference: "Cross-National Equivalent File. Produced and distributed by The Ohio State University with funding from the National Institute on Aging (Grant: 5-R01AG040213-10) and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Grants: 1-R03HD091871-01, 1-R03HD100924-01), Columbus, OH."
Interested in our data?
Fill out the application to access the CNEF data. Our team will reach out soon. In the meantime, take a look at the "Partner Policies" page. A little legwork goes a long way.
Start Now