| dc.description.abstract | The new, more comprehensive and substantially revised ECHP Users' Data Base (UDB), containing 1994-1996 micro-data, has just become available. This gives us a good opportunity to look back and consider the major steps that have been made in ECHP data availability over the last two years; in particular, the actual impact for the scientific community, i.e. the new research projects that the UDB is already or will soon be fostering. It also gives us a good occasion to look forward and announce a major change in our pricing policy, which has been made possible only because of the success met so far. The price of the UDB will be reduced significantly as of 1 January 2000. We hope this will boost further the interest in and use of this unique source of comparable information on income and living conditions in the EU. As you may remember, it is in the new legal framework provided by the so-called EU Statistical Law that Eurostat developed a strategy back in November 1997 to meet the growing interest for ECHP based statistics more satisfactorily. It decided then to construct the UDB, with a view to opening up access to ECHP micro-data without jeopardising both the necessary conditions of data confidentiality and the value of the data. |
