Harmonized Histories

About

The Harmonized Histories is an international comparative dataset that brings together biographical data from multiple existing surveys into a single, comparable format. It enables cross-national research on family and fertility behavior using retrospective questions that reconstruct individual life histories.

The dataset includes the timing and sequence of key family events such as union formation, marriage, divorces, separations, and births of children. In addition, it includes information on socio-economic status, place of residence, and childhood family background (e.g., parental divorce, number of siblings). This makes it particularly well suited for event history analysis as well as approaches like panel models and sequence analysis.

Topics

The Harmonized Histories provides detailed information across several life-course domains:

• Fertility history – timing of births, gender of children, and when children leave the household.
• Partnership history – timing of cohabitations, marriages, separations, divorces, and age of partners.
• Childhood family – parental divorce, number of siblings, and parental education and occupation.
• Residence – country of birth of respondent and parents, and current place of residence.
• Background information – educational level, religiosity, and ethnicity.

How to Access and Cite the Data

Data Access

The Harmonised Histories dataset is freely available for scientific, non-commercial use. Simply register via the GGP Data Portal.

Citation guidelines

If you use the dataset “Harmonized Histories”, please cite:

If you use the dataset “Harmonized Histories I”, please cite:

If you use the dataset “Harmonized Histories II”, please cite:

Countries, Datasets and Contributors

The following table contains a list of all surveys that are included in the Harmonized Histories. It lists the country, the name of the survey, the sample size, a link to the codebook of the original survey and the contributors responsible for the data harmonization.

Acknowledgements

Beside the contributors responsible for the data harmonization listed in the table above, we extend our gratitude to everyone who made this project possible.

Founding Idea (2009):
The concept of a comparative database of union and fertility histories was initiated by the Nonmarital Childbearing Network, including Brienna Perelli-Harris, Michaela Kreyenfeld, Karolin Kubisch, Wendy Sigle-Rushton, Renske Keizer, Paola DiGiulio, and many colleagues from research institutions worldwide.

Project Leadership and Development:

• Brienna Perelli-Harris (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR), later University of Southampton) – Project Head;
• Michaela Kreyenfeld (MPIDR) – Project Leader;
• Karolin Kubisch (MPIDR) – Led surveys' standardization and cleaning, created documentation, maintained updates, and supported users;
• Sigrid Gellers-Barkmann (MPIDR) – Managed data distribution, data protection, and user contact.
  

Institutional Support (2009–2015):
This project was made possible through the encouragement and financial backing of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (Rostock). Special thanks go to the MPI Datalab, particularly Vladimir Shkolnikov, for supporting the extensive data work, and to former MPIDR Director Joshua Goldstein for his commitment.

Related Projects

Changing Life Course Regimes (CLiCR)

The Changing Life Course Regimes (CLiCR) dataset covers 19 post-socialist contexts: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, the Russian Federation, Slovenia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. It is compiled from publicly available data sources, including the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), Family and Fertility Surveys (FFS), Generations and Gender Surveys (GGS), and the Life in Transition Survey (LiTS).

The dataset follows a standardization process largely based on the Harmonized Histories approach, ensuring consistency and comparability across countries. The harmonization was carried out by Aija Duntava and Sunnee Billingsley. For access, contact Sunnee Billingsley to obtain the list of required permissions from DHS, FFS, and GGS.

Further information is available here.

Understanding Society: Partnership and Fertility Histories

Based on data from Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study, the partnership and fertility histories of respondents have been harmonized as part of the GGP Harmonized Histories. Understanding Society is a British household panel study that began in 2009. The partnership and fertility histories of adult participants are harmonized up to wave 9, following the Harmonized Histories guidelines, which ensures comparability with similar datasets from other countries.

The availability of multiple panel waves allows for the creation of two datasets:

1. A cross-sectional Harmonized Histories dataset containing retrospective information based on wave 1.
2. An updated longitudinal dataset incorporating information from subsequent waves through wave 9.

Further information is available here.

We gratefully acknowledge Brienna Perelli-Harris, Niels Blom, and Karolin Kubisch for their work in making these datasets available.