IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bdi/opques/qef_836_24.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Distributional Wealth Accounts: methods and preliminary evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Andrea Neri

    (Bank of Italy)

  • Matteo Spuri

    (Bank of Italy)

  • Francesco Vercelli

    (Bank of Italy)

Abstract

This paper presents the new quarterly experimental statistics on the Distributional Wealth Accounts (DWA) for the household sector, in line with national accounts aggregates. The Bank of Italy, together with the ECB, has coordinated the development of the methodology used for all the euro-area countries and compiles the DWA for Italy, exploiting survey data, balance sheets, information from administrative sources and banks' statistical reports. This paper analyses the methodology, based on assumptions widely used in the scientific literature. It also provides preliminary national evidence and an international comparison. The portfolio composition is heterogeneous across Italian households: the poorest ones mainly hold dwellings and deposits, while the richest ones diversify more. The wealthiest 5 per cent owns around 46 per cent of total net wealth. The main inequality indicators remained practically stable between 2017 and 2022, after the increase observed from 2010 to 2016. The concentration of wealth in Italy is lower than the euro-area average.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrea Neri & Matteo Spuri & Francesco Vercelli, 2024. "Distributional Wealth Accounts: methods and preliminary evidence," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 836, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    • Handle: RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_836_24
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/qef/2024-0836/QEF_836_24.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Philip Vermeulen, 2018. "How Fat is the Top Tail of the Wealth Distribution?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(2), pages 357-387, June.
    2. Giovanni D'Alessio & Andrea Neri, 2015. "Income and wealth sample estimates consistent with macro aggregates: some experiments," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 272, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    3. Engel, Janina & Riera, Pau Gayà & Grilli, Joseph & Sola, Pierre, 2022. "Developing reconciled quarterly distributional national wealth – insight into inequality and wealth structures," Working Paper Series 2687, European Central Bank.
    4. Mr. Robert M Heath & Evrim Bese Goksu, 2016. "G-20 Data Gaps Initiative II: Meeting the Policy Challenge," IMF Working Papers 2016/043, International Monetary Fund.
    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. Ahnert, Henning & Kavonius, Ilja Kristian & Honkkila, Juha & Sola, Pierre, 2020. "Understanding household wealth: linking macro and micro data to produce distributional financial accounts," Statistics Paper Series 37, European Central Bank.
    2. Engel, Janina & Ohlwerter, Dennis & Scherer, Matthias, 2023. "On the estimation of distributional household wealth: addressing under-reporting via optimization problems with invariant Gini coefficient," Working Paper Series 2865, European Central Bank.
    3. Michele Cantarella & Andrea Neri & Maria Giovanna Ranalli, 2021. "Mind the wealth gap: a new allocation method to match micro and macro statistics for household wealth," Papers 2101.01085, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2021.
    4. Ines Heck & Anna Hornykewycz & Jakob Kapeller & Rafael Wildauer, 2024. "Vermögensverteilung in Österreich: eine Analyse auf Basis des HFCS 2021/22," Working Paper Reihe der AK Wien - Materialien zu Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft 255, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik.
    5. Korom, Philipp, 2016. "Inherited advantage: The importance of inheritance for private wealth accumulation in Europe," MPIfG Discussion Paper 16/11, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    6. Mauricio De Rosa, 2018. "Wealth distribution in Uruguay: capitalizing incomes in the dark," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 18-07, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    7. Albers, Thilo & Bartels, Charlotte & Schularick, Moritz, 2022. "Wealth and its Distribution in Germany, 1895-2018," CEPR Discussion Papers 17269, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Mathias Moser & Stefan Humer & Matthias Schnetzer, 2016. "Bequests and the accumulation of wealth in the Eurozone," Working Paper Reihe der AK Wien - Materialien zu Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft 149, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik.
    9. Facundo Alvaredo & Anthony Atkinson & Lucas Chancel & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez & Gabriel Zucman, 2016. "Distributional National Accounts (DINA) Guidelines : Concepts and Methods used in WID.world," Working Papers halshs-02794308, HAL.
    10. Riccardo De Bonis & Matteo Piazza, 2021. "A silent revolution. How central bank statistics have changed in the last 25 years," PSL Quarterly Review, Economia civile, vol. 74(299), pages 347-371.
    11. Theine, Hendrik, 2019. "The media coverage of wealth and inheritance taxation in Germany," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 290, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    12. Bönke, Timm & Werder, Marten v. & Westermeier, Christian, 2017. "How inheritances shape wealth distributions: An international comparison," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 217-220.
    13. Casiraghi, Marco & Gaiotti, Eugenio & Rodano, Lisa & Secchi, Alessandro, 2018. "A “reverse Robin Hood”? The distributional implications of non-standard monetary policy for Italian households," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 215-235.
    14. Enea Baselgia & Isabel Z. Martínez, 2024. "Using Rich Lists to Study the Super-Rich and Top Wealth Inequality: Insights from Switzerland," CESifo Working Paper Series 10993, CESifo.
    15. Bertrand Garbinti & Pierre Lamarche & Fredérique Savignac, 2024. "Wealth Heterogeneity and the Marginal Propensity to Consume out of Wealth," Working Papers 2022-02, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    16. Wildauer, Rafael & Kapeller, Jakob, 2022. "Tracing the invisible rich: A new approach to modelling Pareto tails in survey data," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    17. Nestor Gandelman & Rodrigo Lluberas, 2022. "Wealth in Latin America," Documentos de Investigación 133 Classification JEL: D, Universidad ORT Uruguay. Facultad de Administración y Ciencias Sociales.
    18. Ji Hyung Lee & Yuya Sasaki & Alexis Akira Toda & Yulong Wang, 2022. "Capital and Labor Income Pareto Exponents in the United States, 1916-2019," Papers 2206.04257, arXiv.org.
    19. Toda, Alexis Akira, 2019. "Wealth distribution with random discount factors," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 101-113.
    20. Bertrand Garbinti & Jonathan Goupille-Lebret & Thomas Piketty, 2021. "Accounting for Wealth-Inequality Dynamics: Methods, Estimates, and Simulations for France," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 19(1), pages 620-663.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    micro-macro linkage; wealth distribution;

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • G51 - Financial Economics - - Household Finance - - - Household Savings, Borrowing, Debt, and Wealth

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:bdi:opques:qef_836_24. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bdigvit.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.