Household income aggregates in micro and macro statistics

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Kavonius, Ilja Kristian^{a; 1} | Törmälehto, Veli-Matti^b

Affiliations: [a] European Central Bank, Kaiserstrasse 29, D-60311 Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Tel.: +49 69 13448417; Fax: +49 69 13447637; E-mail: [email protected] | [b] Statistics Finland, Työpajankatu 13, FIN-00022 Statistics Finland, Finland. Tel.: +348 9 17343680; Fax: +358 9 17343264; E-mail: [email protected]

Note: [1] The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the ECB or Statistics Finland.

Abstract: This article compares the data on wages and salaries, entrepreneurial income and property income obtained from Statistics Finland Income Distribution Survey 2000 with those on primary income from National Accounts. The international community of statisticians has in the past years been interested in this kind of analysis for twofold reasons. Firstly disaggregation or the linkage between micro and macro is an example of quality assessment by confronting alternate data sources. Secondly this kind of linkage increases policy relevance of National Accounts information. Discrepancies due to differences in population coverage and definitions between the two statistics have been analysed in the article. Most of the discrepancies can be explained by these differences and only a quite marginal amount of the discrepancies are caused by measurement and sampling errors.

DOI: 10.3233/SJU-2003-20102

Journal: Statistical Journal of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 9-25, 2003