Jeroen Smits is director of the Global Data Lab (GDL) and Associate Professor of Inequality and Development at the Economics Department of Radboud University in the Netherlands. He is a broad social scientist specializing in cross-national multilevel research, data enrichment, and the development of knowledge instruments. Jeroen’s major research interests include inequality, social cohesion, and economic development. He developed a comparable wealth index for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and published comparative studies in the fields of education, child labor, women’s employment, child mortality, intermarriage, and (public) health related issues in LMICs.
Jeroen has a passion for database building and has brought together and harmonized over 400 large households surveys from different sources to create a big data infrastructure for comparative research called Database Developing World (DDW). The DDW currently contains micro-level data on more than 20 million individuals in 110 LMICs. Context information is available for over 1000 areas within these countries. Subnational development indicators derived from the DDW are made freely available to the global community through the GDL Area Database.
Jeroen has a passion for database building and has brought together and harmonized over 400 large households surveys from different sources to create a big data infrastructure for comparative research called Database Developing World (DDW). The DDW currently contains micro-level data on more than 20 million individuals in 110 LMICs. Context information is available for over 1000 areas within these countries. Subnational development indicators derived from the DDW are made freely available to the global community through the GDL Area Database.