Combining Survey and Administrative Data to Estimate the Distribution of Household Deposits

Abstract

Several studies have combined survey data with macroeconomic aggregates from the national accounts to produce more reliable and timely statistics on the distribution of household income and wealth. This paper builds on the methodology developed by the ECB Expert Group on Distributional Financial Accounts, and proposes a novel approach for Italy to align survey-based estimates for total deposits with the corresponding macroeconomic figures, by using administrative records that are linked to the Survey on Household Income and Wealth and the aggregate information stemming from supervisory reporting data. The proposed method results in a slight decrease in the inequality of deposit distribution compared with survey data, and generally ensures a closer match with the aggregates from supervisory reporting data compared with the ESCB’s approach.

Keywords: micro-macro linkage, deposits distribution, wealth distribution

JEL Classification: D14, D31, G51