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Abstract:
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The importance of distributional information on household income and wealth and the vulnerability of households have gained a lot of recognition recently. Methodologies to complement timelier macro indicators with information from survey data have been developed to benefit from the advantages of timely aggregate data and distributional information from micro data. To conduct joint analyses based on macro and micro data, one needs better understanding of the differences in the concepts and methodologies between these two statistics. In the euro area significant discrepancies between wealth levels produced by macro and survey statistics have been observed. To assess the comparability between the two data sources, an Expert group on linking macro and micro data on household wealth has been set up by the ECB. The first conclusions suggest that there is no single explanation for the differences between wealth levels indicated by survey and National accounts data. However, with better understanding of various elements in the data production and by introducing some adjustments in the wealth concepts of both statistics, the gap between macro and micro figures can be significantly reduced.
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