Household income by socio-occupational category

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Glaude, Michel¹ | Gombert, Monique²

Note: [1] Michel Glaude is a senior statistician working for the French national statistical institute (INSEE) as chief of the income division since 1986. He graduated from the “Ecole Poly technique” (1968) and the ENSAE (1973) (National School of Statistics and Economic Management). From 1975 to 1984 he worked for the “household living conditions” division, where he was in charge of a forecasting model of household motorisation and of the French family expenditure surveys. He has published many papers, especially on child cost estimation, consumption patterns and wage earning profiles. He has contributed to different international meetings with invited papers: CIRET 1987, IARIW 1987 and ISI 1983. Since 1988 he has been a member of the International Statistical Institute (ISI).

Note: [2] Monique Gombert is a senior statistician of the French national institute of statistics (INSEE). She is a graduate of the Marseilles Business School. As a specialist in demography and income in agriculture, she has published several papers on those subjects. She is currently responsible for statistics on household consumption within national accounts, having previously worked in INSEE's income division.

Abstract: Accounts by socio-occupational category are a very good example of the relationship between macro-economic data based on the national accounting system and micro-economic data obtained from household surveys. Every five years since 1956 French statisticians have tried to break down the household income account into eight subgroups according to the socio-occupational category to which the head of household belongs. They use more than 150 distribution keys coming from various household surveys (health, housing, consumption) and from a specific “taxable income survey” conducted especially with the income tax authorities for this purpose and thought to provide better information than an ordinary household survey. The expectations of users and technological advances in data analysis and collection have stimulated new developments: (i) an updating method has been implemented to produce more recent accounts; (ii) income accounts are also calculated according to family size and income level; (iii) alternative definitions of disposable income can be evaluated, such as discretionary income and pre-allocated income, broadening the concept of disposable income by including the counterparts of the individualized final consumption expenditure of Government bodies.

DOI: 10.3233/SJU-1989-6202

Journal: Statistical Journal of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 127-145, 1989