Global Welfare Dataset (GLOW)

The Global Welfare Dataset (GLOW) is a cross-national panel dataset that aims at facilitating comparative social policy research on the Global North and Global South. The database includes 381 variables on 61 countries from years between 1989 and 2015. The database has four main categories of data: welfare, development, economy and politics.

The data is the result of an original data compilation assembled by using information from several international and domestic sources. Missing data was supplemented by domestic sources where available. We sourced data primarily from these international databases:

Atlas of Social Protection Indicators of Resilience and Equity – ASPIRE (World Bank)

Government Finance Statistics (International Monetary Fund)

Social Expenditure Database – SOCX (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)

Social Protection Statistics – ESPROSS (Eurostat)

Social Security Inquiry (International Labour Organization)

Social Security Programs Throughout the World (Social Security Administration)

Statistics on Income and Living Conditions – EU-SILC (European Union)

World Development Indicators (World Bank)

However, much of the welfare data from these sources are not compatible between all country cases. We conducted an extensive review of the compatibility of the data and computed compatible figures where possible. Since the heart of this database is the provision of social assistance across a global sample, we applied the ASPIRE methodology in order to build comparable indicators across European and Emerging Market economies. Specifically, we constructed indicators of average per capita transfers and coverage rates for social assistance programs for all the country cases not included in the World Bank’s ASPIRE dataset (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom.)

For details, please see:

https://glow.ku.edu.tr/about