The Swedish Level-of-Living Survey (LNU)

Summary

Strengths Data for the sixth Level of Living Survey is currently being collected and provides good opportunities to analyze changes in work conditions, social structure and health for various groups. LNU has two important subsets: one for children and youth, which makes it possible to study intergeneration aspects, another for immigrants, which provides good opportunities to compare welfare development for Swedish born and foreign born citizens. The purpose with the new data collection is to provide data for studies of how individuals’ living conditions look today as well as how they have evolved during the first decade of the 21st century. How have working conditions evolved over time? What are the long-term consequences of a recession and what groups are affected? Does income increase to the same extent for both women and men as they move into higher education? How do partners divide their income between them? Why do couples divorce and how are children affected? These are examples of questions researchers will be able to answer with data from the Level of Living Survey 2010. To sum up; LNU also manage to follow development in Sweden in a comparative sense with developments in other countries. With LNU, one can follow the health of the aging process, also longitudinally within individuals and also over time,(the sample is constantly updated with the sample with young and immigrants). The restriction is then that we release our interview subjects at the age of 75, then moving on to SWEOLD. A major point is to see LNU and SWEOLD complementary in terms of health trends. (As SWEOLD is an older study, it is of course more information about health, but also LNU has an extensive section on about 70 different symptoms, so it is an unusually informative set of health variables to be a multipurpose study. Not all dataset in the Swedish compilation have a good coverage of health variables, most register data as e.g. mortality alone) Weaknesses LNU has few questions on attitudes and personal values.

Type of data

Data Source
Registry + Survey

Type of Study
Survey different

Data gathering method
Face-to-face
Registries

Access to data

Conditions of access
Downloaded files/DVD etc.

Type of available data (e.g. anonymised microdata, aggregated tables, etc.)
Primarily anonymised microdata, aggregated tables, etc.

Formats available
Dataset is compatible to many applications; Excel, SAS, SPSS, STATA, Text, etc.

Coverage

Coverage Years of collection, reference years, and sample sizes
The Swedish Level-of-Living survey is one of the longest running longitudinal social science surveys in the world. It was first conducted in 1968. Thereafter, it has been replicated in 1974, 1981, 1991, 2000 and 2010. The original basis for LNU was a random sample of 1/1000 of the Swedish population between 15 and 75 years of age. In 1991, the lower age limit was raised to 18 years.

First year of collection
1968

Stratification if applicable
No stratification

Base used for sampling

Geographical coverage and breakdowns
The whole country

Age range
15-75

Statistical representativeness
Population representative

Coverage of main and cross-cutting topics
The respondents are asked questions about their living conditions in several areas. LNU uses a multidimensional approach, covering individuals’ command over resources in terms of family and social relations, material living conditions (income and wealth), health, education, working conditions, political life, leisure time activities, housing conditions, etc. The same respondents have been interviewed again at later waves. In addition to the interview data, register information has been added, mainly in order to calculate household income. Starting in 2000, children age 10-18 living in the same household as the main respondent are interviewed about their living conditions in a broad sense, via an audio-questionnaire. Information from co-residential partners/spouses is also collected.

Linkage

Standardisation
ISCED used.

Possibility of linkage among databases
Good options of linking through personal identification number-ID. The division of level of living into different components, inspired by the work within the UN, resulted in the following list of components included in the Swedish Level of Living Surveys: Health and access to care; Employment and working conditions; Economic resources; Educational resources; Family and social integration; Housing and neighbourhood facilities; Security of life and property; Recreation and culture; Political resources.

Data quality

Entry errors if applicable
No major entry errors.

Breaks
The first survey was based on a 0.0001 random sample of the Swedish population aged 15 to 75 years of age. The 1968 survey was to be repeated in 1974, and the decision was made to stick to the original sample but also include new cohorts of young people and immigrants arriving to Sweden in between the survey periods. Dropped from the sample was those above 75 years of age and those who had either emigrated or died. In 1981 the third Level of Living Survey was conducted with the same sample design. The 1991 survey was conducted with basically the same design, except for the fact that the youngest age bracket now became 18 instead of 15.

Consistency of terminology or coding used during collection
Code book and questionnaire available in English. http://snd.gu.se/en/catalogue/study/389 High level of consistency.

Governance

Contact information
Janne Jonsson and Michael Tåhlin
Institute of social research, University of Stockholm

106 91 Stockholm Sweden Phone: +468-162000
Email: Janne.jonsson(at)sofi.su.se; Michael.tahlin(at)sofi.su.se
Url: http://snd.gu.se/en/catalogue/study/389

Timeliness, transparency
To be discussed with principal investigator.