Household actual final consumption in the Netherlands

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Bernelot Moens, W.E.

Affiliations: Statistics Netherlands, Socioeconomic Statistics Division, P.O. Box 4000, 2270 JM Voorburg, Netherlands. Email: [email protected]

Abstract: Statistics Netherlands has at its disposal a continuous time series of Socio-economic Accounts starting in 1988. These series contain detailed figures on income and consumption expenditure of households. The figures are reconciled and stem from different sources. It was concluded however, that these integrated figures still do not represent a complete picture of household prosperity. Therefore work was started to complement the data with estimations of the social transfers in kind by the government and non-profit institutions serving households. The result, a preliminary estimation of what is now called ‘household actual final consumption’, is presented in this article. The work was started at a time that the System of National Accounts 1993 (SNA) did not yet exist. The SNA has defined this new concept for the first time. Before, only unofficial methodological conventions were available. Because of this, the definitions used to calculate the household actual final consumption differ slightly from the official SNA definitions. This article shows that households themselves spend 57% of the national income (1993), but the household actual final consumption amounts to about 72% of the national income. The main results (1988–1993) of the analysis and the methodological headlines are described.

DOI: 10.3233/SJU-1996-13403

Journal: Statistical Journal of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 349-360, 1996