An Integrated Approach for Top-Corrected Ginis

38 Pages Posted: 27 Feb 2017

See all articles by Charlotte Bartels

Charlotte Bartels

German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) - German Socio Economic Panel

Maria Metzing

German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin)

Abstract

Household survey data provide a rich information set on income, household context and demographic variables, but tend to under report 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 Gini coefficients 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

JEL Classification: C46, C81, D31, H2

Suggested Citation

Bartels, Charlotte and Metzing, Maria, An Integrated Approach for Top-Corrected Ginis. SOEPpaper No. 895, IZA Discussion Paper No. 10573, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2923659 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2923659

Charlotte Bartels (Contact Author)

German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) - German Socio Economic Panel ( email )

DIW Berlin
Berlin, Berlin 10117
Germany

Maria Metzing

German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin)

Mohrenstraße 58
Berlin, 10117
Germany

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
37
Abstract Views
345
PlumX Metrics