IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eea/boewps/wp2019-05.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Are survey data underestimating the inequality of wealth?

Author

Listed:
  • Jaanika Merikull
  • Tairi Room

Abstract

This paper uses administrative data from registers and survey data from interviews to analyse unit and item non-response in a wealth survey. It draws on the Estonian Household Finance and Consumption Survey dataset, where the survey data on income and wealth are complemented by information on the same variables from administrative sources for all the people sampled. The results show that the non-response contributes to the underestimation of wealth inequality in the survey data, as the Gini coefficient is underestimated by 6 percentage points and also the top wealth shares are substantially underestimated. The downward bias is originating from item non-response and not from unit non-response. Imputation can address the problems caused by item non-response across most of the net wealth distribution, but does not eliminate the downward bias at the top of the wealth distribution.

Suggested Citation

  • Jaanika Merikull & Tairi Room, 2019. "Are survey data underestimating the inequality of wealth?," Bank of Estonia Working Papers wp2019-05, Bank of Estonia, revised 29 Oct 2019.
    • Handle: RePEc:eea:boewps:wp2019-05
    DOI: 10.23656/25045520/052019/0167
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.23656/25045520/052019/0167
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.23656/25045520/052019/0167?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roine, Jesper & Waldenström, Daniel, 2014. "Long run trends in the distribution of income and wealth," Working Paper Series, Center for Fiscal Studies 2014:5, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    2. Jesper Roine & Daniel Waldenström, 2009. "Wealth Concentration over the Path of Development: Sweden, 1873–2006," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 111(1), pages 151-187, March.
    3. Frank A. Cowell & Philippe Kerm, 2015. "Wealth Inequality: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 671-710, September.
    4. Olympia Bover, 2011. "The Spanish survey of household finances (eff): description and methods of the 2008 wave," Occasional Papers 1103, Banco de España.
    5. Jacob Lundberg & Daniel Waldenström, 2018. "Wealth Inequality in Sweden: What can we Learn from Capitalized Income Tax Data?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(3), pages 517-541, September.
    6. Olympia Bover, 2008. "The Spanish Survey of Household Finances (EFF): description and methods of the 2005 wave," Occasional Papers 0803, Banco de España.
    7. Anthony Atkinson & Thomas Piketty, 2010. "Top Incomes : A Global Perspective," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) halshs-00754875, HAL.
    8. Andrea Neri & Maria Giovanna Ranalli, 2012. "To misreport or not to report? The measurement of household financial wealth," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 870, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    9. Jesse Bricker & Alice Henriques & Jacob Krimmel & John Sabelhaus, 2016. "Measuring Income and Wealth at the Top Using Administrative and Survey Data," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 47(1 (Spring), pages 261-331.
    10. Bach, Stefan & Thiemann, Andreas & Zucco, Aline, 2019. "Looking for the missing rich: tracing the top tail of the wealth distribution," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 26(6), pages 1234-1258.
    11. Osier, Guillaume, 2016. "Unit non-response in household wealth surveys," Statistics Paper Series 15, European Central Bank.
    12. Philip Vermeulen, 2016. "Estimating the Top Tail of the Wealth Distribution," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(5), pages 646-650, May.
    13. Arthur B. Kennickell & R. Louise Woodburn, 1999. "CONSISTENT WEIGHT DESIGN FOR THE 1989, 1992 AND 1995 SCFs, AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 45(2), pages 193-215, June.
    14. 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.
    15. Sofie R. Waltl & Robin Chakraborty, 2022. "Missing the wealthy in the HFCS: micro problems with macro implications," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(1), pages 169-203, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cerniauskas Nerijus & Jousten Alain, 2021. "Statutory, effective, and optimal net tax schedules in Lithuania," IZA Journal of Labor Policy, Sciendo & Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 11(1), pages 1-33, May.
    2. Carlos J. Gil-Hern ndez & Pedro Salas-Rojo & Guillem Vidal-Lorda & Davide Villani, 2024. "Wealth Inequality and Stratification by Social Classes in 21st-Century Europe," LWS Working papers 43, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    3. Michał Brzeziński & Katarzyna Sałach, 2020. "Why wealth inequality differs between post-socialist countries?," Working Papers 2020-14, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    4. Petar Peshev, 2023. "Estimation of the Value, Distribution and Concentration of Wealth in Bulgaria, 1995-2020," Economic Studies journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 3, pages 104-129.
    5. Gil-Hernández, Carlos J. & Salas Rojo, Pedro & Vidal-Lorda, Guillem & Villani, Davide, 2024. "Wealth inequality and stratification by social classes in 21st-century Europe," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 122125, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    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. Sofie R. Waltl & Robin Chakraborty, 2022. "Missing the wealthy in the HFCS: micro problems with macro implications," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(1), pages 169-203, March.
    2. Chakraborty Robin & Kavonius Ilja Kristian & Pérez-Duarte Sébastien & Vermeulen Philip, 2019. "Is the Top Tail of the Wealth Distribution the Missing Link between the Household Finance and Consumption Survey and National Accounts?," Journal of Official Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 35(1), pages 31-65, March.
    3. 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.
    4. Benjamin Ching & Tayla Forward & Oscar Parkyn, 2023. "Estimating the Distribution of Wealth in New Zealand," Treasury Working Paper Series 23/01, New Zealand Treasury.
    5. Gabriel Zucman, 2019. "Global Wealth Inequality," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 11(1), pages 109-138, August.
    6. Thilo N. H. Albers & Charlotte Bartels & Moritz Schularick, 2020. "The Distribution of Wealth in Germany, 1895-2018," ECONtribute Policy Brief Series 001, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    7. 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.
    8. Sofie R. Waltl, 2022. "Wealth Inequality: A Hybrid Approach Toward Multidimensional Distributional National Accounts In Europe," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 68(1), pages 74-108, March.
    9. Apostel, Arthur & O'Neill, Daniel W., 2022. "A one-off wealth tax for Belgium: Revenue potential, distributional impact, and environmental effects," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    10. 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.
    11. Elinder, Mikael & Erixson, Oscar & Waldenström, Daniel, 2018. "Inheritance and wealth inequality: Evidence from population registers," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 17-30.
    12. 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).
    13. Michał Brzeziński & Katarzyna Sałach, 2020. "Why wealth inequality differs between post-socialist countries?," Working Papers 2020-14, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    14. Fasianos, Apostolos & Tsoukalis, Panos, 2023. "Decomposing wealth inequalities in the wake of the Greek debt crisis," The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, vol. 28(C).
    15. Steiner, Viktor & Zhu, Junyi, 2021. "A joint top income and wealth distribution," Discussion Papers 2021/3, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    16. 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.
    17. 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.
    18. Michal Brzezinski & Katarzyna Sałach & Marcin Wroński, 2019. "Wealth inequality in Central and Eastern Europe: evidence from joined household survey and rich lists’ data," Working Papers 2019-09, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw.
    19. Tiefensee, Anita & Grabka, Markus M., 2016. "Comparing Wealth - Data Quality of the HFCS," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 10(2), pages 119-142.
    20. Marcin Wroński, 2022. "Household wealth in Central and Eastern Europe Explaining the wealth gap between Poland and Hungary," Bank i Kredyt, Narodowy Bank Polski, vol. 53(5), pages 443-474.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    wealth distribution; unit non-response; item non-response; participation bias; wealth survey; income survey; Household Finance and Consumption Survey; Estonia;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; 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:eea:boewps:wp2019-05. 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: Peeter Luikmel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/epgovee.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.