IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hdl/wpaper/0801.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Inclusion of Non-cash Housing Advantages in the Income Concept. Estimates and Distribution Effects for Belgium

Author

Listed:
  • Gerlinde Verbist
  • Stijn Lefebure

Abstract

As pointed out by the Expert Group on Household Income Statistics (Canberra Group, 2001), the way in which is dealt with the income value of home ownership is crucial for distribution analyses. Home-ownership can have a large impact on a household’s expenditure structure. Because of the large proportion of home-owners in Belgium, a serious attempt to estimate the economic well-being of households should take the non-cash advantage derived of home-ownership, the so-called ‘imputed rent’ into account. Also tenants who benefit from below-market rent or rent-free accommodation can be considered as beneficiaries of imputed rent. In this paper we explore different techniques to estimate imputed rent for Belgium, based on the methodology presented by Frick & Grabka (2003). We apply two methods for estimating imputed rent, namely 1) the selfassessment approach, and 2) the opportunity cost approach. Calculations are performed on the micro-data of the Belgian EU-SILC of the survey year 2004 (with income data referring to 2003). These estimates allow us to assess the distribution effect of including imputed rent in the income.

Suggested Citation

  • Gerlinde Verbist & Stijn Lefebure, 2008. "The Inclusion of Non-cash Housing Advantages in the Income Concept. Estimates and Distribution Effects for Belgium," Working Papers 0801, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    • Handle: RePEc:hdl:wpaper:0801
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://medialibrary.uantwerpen.be/oldcontent/container2601/files/CSB%20WP%202008/CSB_WP_08_01.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. MEULEMANS, Bert & CANTILLON, Bea, 1993. "De geruisloze kering: De nivellering van de intergenerationele welvaartsverschillen," Economic and Social Journal (Economisch en Sociaal Tijdschrift), University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics, vol. 47(3), pages 421-447, September.
    2. Smeeding, Timothy M, et al, 1993. "Poverty, Inequality, and Family Living Standards Impacts across Seven Nations: The Effect of Noncash Subsidies for Health, Education and Housing," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 39(3), pages 229-256, September.
    3. Joachim R. Frick & Markus M. Grabka, 2003. "Imputed Rent and Income Inequality: A Decomposition Analysis for Great Britain, West Germany and the U.S," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 49(4), pages 513-537, December.
    4. Thaler, Richard, 1980. "Toward a positive theory of consumer choice," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 39-60, March.
    5. Katherine A. Kiel & Jeffrey E. Zabel, 1999. "The Accuracy of Owner‐Provided House Values: The 1978–1991 American Housing Survey," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 27(2), pages 263-298, June.
    6. Pietro Catte & Nathalie Girouard & Robert Price & Christophe André, 2004. "Housing Markets, Wealth and the Business Cycle," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 394, OECD Publishing.
    7. David A. Wise, 2004. "Perspectives on the Economics of Aging," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number wise04-1, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Figari, Francesco & Paulus, Alari & Sutherland, Holly & Tsakloglou, Panos & Verbist, Gerlinde & Zantomio, Francesca, 2012. "Taxing Home Ownership: Distributional Effects of Including Net Imputed Rent in Taxable Income," IZA Discussion Papers 6493, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Frick, Joachim R. & Grabka, Markus M. & Smeeding, Timothy M. & Tsakloglou, Panos, 2010. "Distributional Effects of Imputed Rents in Five European Countries," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 19(3), pages 167-179.
    3. Fessler, Pirmin & Rehm, Miriam & Tockner, Lukas, 2014. "The impact of housing non-cash income on the unconditional distribution of household income in Austria," Working Paper Series 1718, European Central Bank.
    4. Costa-Font, Joan & Vilaplana-Prieto, Cristina, 2022. "Health shocks and housing downsizing: How persistent is ‘ageing in place’?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 204(C), pages 490-508.
    5. Andrea Brandolini, 2013. "Poverty," Chapters, in: Luigino Bruni & Stefano Zamagni (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Reciprocity and Social Enterprise, chapter 26, pages 261-270, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Callan, Tim & Keane, Claire, 2009. "Non-cash Benefits and the Distribution of Economic Welfare," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 40(1), pages 49-71.
    7. Gerlinde Verbist & Michael Föster & Vaalavou, M., 2013. "GINI DP 74: The Impact of Publicly Provided Services on the Distribution of Resources: Review of New Results and Methods," GINI Discussion Papers 74, AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.
    8. Erlend Eide Bø, 2020. "Taxation of Housing: Killing Several Birds with One Stone," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 66(3), pages 534-557, September.
    9. Carlos Felipe Balcázar & Lidia Ceriani & Sergio Olivieri & Marco Ranzani, 2017. "Rent‐Imputation for Welfare Measurement: A Review of Methodologies and Empirical Findings," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 63(4), pages 881-898, December.
    10. Salvatore Morelli & Timothy Smeeding & Jeffrey Thompson, 2014. "Post-1970 Trends in Within-Country Inequality and Poverty: Rich and Middle Income Countries," CSEF Working Papers 356, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    11. Murray, Tim & Dunn, Richard A., 2022. "Household production, home improvement, and housing investment among older Americans," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    12. Maximilian Stockhausen, 2017. "The Distribution of Economic Resources to Children in Germany," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 901, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    13. Joachim R. Frick & Jan Goebel & Markus M. Grabka, 2007. "Assessing the Distributional Impact of "Imputed Rent" and "Non-cash Employee Income" in Microdata: Case Studies Based on EU-SILC (2004) and SOEP (2002)," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 2, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    14. Bruce D. Meyer & James X. Sullivan, 2009. "Five Decades of Consumption and Income Poverty," NBER Working Papers 14827, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Zantomio, Francesca & Sutherland, Holly & Mullan, Killian, 2009. "Accounting for housing in poverty analysis," ISER Working Paper Series 2009-33, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    16. Gao, Nan & Liang, Pinghan, 2019. "Home value misestimation and household behavior: Evidence from China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 168-180.
    17. Garner, Thesia I. & Short, Kathleen, 2009. "Accounting for owner-occupied dwelling services: Aggregates and distributions," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 233-248, September.
    18. Tur-Sinai, Aviad & Fleishman, Larisa & Romanov, Dmitri, 2020. "The accuracy of self-reported dwelling valuation," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C).
    19. Ellingsen, Tore & Johannesson, Magnus, 2009. "Time is not money," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 96-102, October.
    20. Markus M. Grabka, 2006. "Codebook for the $PEQUIV File 1984-2005: CNEF Variables with Extended Income Information for the SOEP," Data Documentation 12, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    non-cash; income; simulation; distribution; imputed rent;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D3 - Microeconomics - - Distribution
    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hdl:wpaper:0801. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Santiago Burone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csbuabe.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.