Publication: Global Labor Database User Manual: A Guide to Understanding, Using, and Interacting with the Global Labor Database
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2024-05-29
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2024-05-29
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The Global Labor Database (GLD) is part of the World Bank initiatives to harmonize labor force surveys and household surveys with a relevant labor module. Its mission is to create an open and transparent harmonization with sufficient background information to allow data analysts to use, alter, and expand the harmonization. In this sense, background information goes beyond code, questionnaires, and reports, and includes documenting survey details learned during harmonization which are not recorded elsewhere. An example of this documenting changes to the currency or the administrative divisions. The GLD aims to be an open-source database, meaning that as much information should be accessible to as many people as possible. It also strives to be transparent, making all steps that create the harmonization traceable, from raw data acquisition to harmonized variable coding. Hence, all steps of the harmonization process are documented and made available, including the survey documentation, code and notes that allow users to fully comprehend the survey design and the choices made in the harmonization. The availability of the codes and documentation enables users to customize and add variables not in the GLD harmonization. Most harmonization efforts provide users with a take it or leave it option, but the GLD's open and transparent approach allows users to trace and deviate from the standard harmonization at any point, giving them a head start regardless of where they wish to jump in. Finally, the GLD follows up and expands on the previous initiative to harmonized household surveys, the International Income Distribution Database (I2D2). The I2D2 was superseded by the Global Monitoring Database (GMD), which however focused on household budget surveys and did not harmonize labor force surveys. The GLD was created to remedy this gap in the survey type coverage and complement it, with a stronger focus on labor market information through an expanded dictionary and more rigorous validation of labor indicators.
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“World Bank. 2024. Global Labor Database User Manual: A Guide to Understanding, Using, and Interacting with the Global Labor Database. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/41613 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
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