The IZA Evaluation Dataset:Towards Evidence-Based Labor Policy-Making

The evaluation of labor market policies has become an important issue in many Europeancountries. In recent years, a number of them have opened their administrative databases forevaluation studies. The advantages of administrative data are straightforward: they areaccurate, contain a large number of observations (in some cases the whole population) andusually cover a long period of time. However, the information contained in administrative datais normally limited to administrative purposes. Therefore, information that might be relevantfor economic modeling is often absent. The IZA Evaluation Dataset aims to overcome suchlimitations for Germany by complementing administrative data from the Federal EmploymentAgency with innovative survey data. The administrative part of the dataset consists of a largerandom sample of inflows into unemployment in Germany from 2001 to 2008 and containsaround 920,000 individuals. The complementary survey covers a panel of more than 17,000individuals who entered unemployment between June 2007 and May 2008. They wereinitially interviewed shortly after becoming unemployed and then again one year later. Inaddition, a quarter of individuals were interviewed already after six months. The survey dataalso contain information on search behavior, ethnic and social networks, psychologicalfactors, (non-)cognitive abilities, and attitudes. This paper describes the sampling andcontents of the IZA Evaluation Dataset and outlines the future development....