Changing Life Course Regimes (CLiCR) Data: Harmonization Manual

This paper describes the standardization and harmonization process of the Changing Life Course Regimes (CLiCR) data. CLiCR data cover 19 post-socialist contexts and is constructed with publicly available data sources: Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), Family and Fertility Surveys (FFS), Generations and Gender Surveys (GGS) and the Life in Transition Survey (LiTS). Life course histories, particularly related to fertility and partnerships, and other background variables were constructed for cohorts that came of age in the decades before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall and dissolution of the Soviet Union. In total, CLiCR harmonizes information from 39 data sources (two surveys per country, with the exception of three surveys for Poland). The total number of men and women included in CLiCR is 186,368. The earliest and latest surveys administered were the Polish FFS in 1991, covering men and women 18 years and older, and the Polish GGS in 2010/11, covering men and women of ages 17-83. This is the first resource that harmonizes large publically available histories across this range of countries and these data provide new research opportunities on post-socialist countries.