Administrative meets survey data: measuring household indebtedness in Ireland

The 2020 Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) marked the first time that survey data from Irish households was supplemented with administrative data from the Central Bank’s Central Credit Register (CCR). Using household level data from the panel component of the survey, weighted to the full population in 2018, we develop a simple approach for estimating measurement error and applying it, find at least one third of households hold “revealed debt” worth almost 13 per cent of the value of total debt outstanding in 2020. Revealed debt is debt which was previously not reported in the HFCS but has come to light with the inclusion of the CCR. In doing so, we show that incorporating the CCR into the HFCS has helped to correct for under-reporting and improved the overall quality of liabilities data in the survey. Controlling for demographic and income characteristics, we find that households with more complex balance sheets are more likely to hold revealed debt. The results suggest that incorporating administrative data into surveys can help alleviate issues surrounding recall bias and other human errors that may generate initial misreporting.