Micro and Macro Data: A Comparison of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey with Financial Accounts in Austria

Abstract

This paper compares the survey results on savings deposits and estimates on total financial assets from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) in Austria with administrative records from the national accounts for the household sector. The micro data newly generated through the HFCS and the detailed (internally available) breakdowns of savings deposits in the existing macro data (Financial Accounts) lend themselves to a more in-depth analysis of the similarities and differences in these two sources than what has been done in the literature so far. Cross-checking the data shows that the HFCS-based aggregate estimates differ from the financial accounts data, which is line with evidence from the literature, but additionally the paper adds to the literature that the underlying patterns have been captured adequately by the survey at the micro level. Moreover, a simulation based on the HFCS data serves to demonstrate the effect that the inclusion of savings deposits in the most affluent tail of the distribution has on common statistics. Undercoverage above all of the upper deposit ranges suggests an underestimation or bias in the statistics. This underestimation, however, can be shown to be relatively minor, in particular in the case of robust statistical measures such as the median or percentile ratios.

Keywords: household finance and consumption survey, financial accounts

JEL Classification: C80, D30, D31, E01, E21