For those taking classes (MSc and SS) with me who have upcoming assignments, you may find it interesting and/or helpful to take a look at some data that relates to some of the issues that we have been discussing this term.
As inequality has been a theme in both classes, I have uploaded an export of the “Top Incomes” data from Atkinson et al to the class WebCT pages. (It’s available from the web site directly, but the export can be slightly fiddly.) It is a .csv file that you should be able to open in any spreadsheet (e.g. Excel).
Klaus Armingeon and collaborators make available two data sets – “Comparative Political Data Set I (23 OECD Countries)” and “Comparative Political Data Set II (28 Post Communist Countries)” – on their website. This aggregates together data from a whole variety of sources. See the codebooks for details of the variables, but you’ll find measures of electoral turnout, female political representation, electoral proportionality, welfare spending, and numerous others. They provide the data in the Excel format.
The Quality of Government Insitute at Gothenburg makes available “The QoG Time-Series Data” that you can find by clicking on the “Data” tab to the left of the home page. This data set is even larger than the Armingeon et al ones, and covers many more variables as well as many more countries. Again, see the codebook. The file is available in the .csv format.
Updated (2011/11/10)
Frederick Solt provides “The Standardized World Income Inequality Database“.
Timothy Hicks 