Household distributional results in line with national accounts, experimental statistics

Estimates of the distribution of income, consumption, and savings across the household sector, constructed from household micro data aligned to national accounts aggregates.

Dataset

About

There is a large demand for household distributional information in line with national accounts totals, as it provides comprehensive, coherent and comparable results that are consistent with macroeconomic aggregates. For that reason, the OECD and Eurostat launched an expert group to develop distributional results on income, consumption and savings in line with national accounts aggregates, i.e. the Expert Group on Disparities in a National Accounts framework (EG DNA). This expert group developed methodology to compile distributional results in line with national accounts on the basis of available micro data sources, and engaged in a couple of exercises to compile experimental results. The most recent exercise was conducted in 2020 and these results have been made available in the public databases of the OECD and Eurostat as experimental statistics. In the meantime, several countries have also started to update these results on a regular basis. In view of the G20 Data Gaps Initiative, a new collection round will be conducted in 2024.

This chart shows the ratio of the disposable income of each quintile of the income distribution to the average disposable income of all quintile of the income distribution for a country in a given year. The income distribution is ordered by equivalised disposable income.

Access data

Distributional results on household income, consumption and savings (OECD experimental statistics)
Socio-demographic characteristics of the households and individuals included in the various income groups

Methodology

The data have been compiled on the basis of methodology as developed by the EG DNA, combining national accounts’ data with micro data sources on income, consumption and savings to arrive at the relevant results. The methodology proceeds in five steps:

removing any amounts from the national accounts’ results that do not relate to private households which constitute the target population for the distributional results;
identifying micro variables that can be linked to the relevant national account;
generating imputations for elements that may not be covered in micro data and to align the results to the national accounts totals as derived in step 1;
clustering households into household groups, e.g. on the basis of their disposable income or socio-demographic characteristics; and
deriving distributional indicators based on the results for the household groupings derived in step 4.

More information on these steps can be found in the handbook. Furthermore, the collection template as used in the EG DNA work can be found here (XLSM) (please also see the reporting instructions (PDF)).

Member countries of the EG DNA are compiling distributional results on the basis of various micro data sources available to their institution. In addition, Eurostat and the OECD have started to compile results for countries that are not participating in this work, utilising data sources available at the international level. Eurostat is focusing on EU countries, using EU-SILC and HBS data as input, and the OECD is focusing on non-EU OECD member countries, relying on data available from the Luxembourg Income Study. Results for EU countries are already available and have been included in the database. Results for non-EU countries are expected to become available in the course of 2024. More information on the Eurostat methodology, including results from sensitivity analyses accompanying the results, can be obtained here.

Next steps

The EG DNA is continuing its work, among others to broaden the range of countries for which distributional information becomes available, to improve the timeliness of the results, and to increase the granularity of the data. In this regard, the G20 Data Gaps Initiative includes a recommendation for G20 economies to compile annual distributional results on income, consumption and saving at decile level within 18 months after the reference period by the end of 2026.

Furthermore, the G20 Data Gaps Initiative includes a recommendation for distributional results on household wealth in line with macroeconomic aggregates. In that light, the OECD has launched a new expert group on the distribution of household wealth (EG DHW) to develop a harmonised template and methodology for the regular compilation of distributional wealth results by the end of 2026. For this purpose, the OECD closely collaborates with G20 and other OECD economies, the European Central Bank, and other international organisations.