An integrated approach for a top-corrected income distribution

Charlotte Bartels and Maria Metzing

The Journal of Economic Inequality, 2019, vol. 17, issue 2, No 2, 125-143

Abstract: Abstract Household survey data provide a rich information set on income, household context and demographic variables, but tend to underreport incomes at the very top of the distribution. Administrative data like tax records offer more precise information on top incomes, but at the expense of household context details and incomes of non-filers at the bottom of the distribution. We combine the benefits of the two data sources and develop an integrated approach for top-corrected income distributions where we impute top incomes in survey data using information on top income distribution from tax data. We apply our approach to European EU-SILC survey data which in some countries include administrative data. We find higher inequality in those European countries that exclusively rely (Germany, UK) or have relied (Spain) on interviews for the provision of EU-SILC survey data as compared to countries that use administrative data.

Keywords: Gini coefficient; Top income shares; Survey data; Tax record data; Pareto distribution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (42)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10888-018-9394-x

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