Comparative EU statistics on Income and Living Conditions

380 Pages·2007·10.49 MB·English

M e t h o d o l o g i e s a n d
w o r k i n g p a p e r s
Comparative EU statistics on Income
and Living Conditions: Issues and Challenges
Proceedings of the EU-SILC conference
(Helsinki, 6-8 November 2006)
2007 edition
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Luxembourg: Of ce for Of cial Publications of the European Communities, 2007
ISBN 978-92-79-04717-6
Cat. No. KS-RA-07-007-EN-N

Theme: Population and social conditions
Collection: Methodologies and working papers
© European Communities, 2007
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword page 7
I General presentation of EU-SILC 9
Chapter 1 EU-SILC (community statistics on income and living conditions:
general presentation of the instrument)
Anne CLEMENCEAU and Jean-Marc MUSEUX 11
Chapter 2 EU-SILC (community statistics on income and living conditions:
challenges for member states)
Martin BAUER 37
II EU-SILC and recommendations of the “Expert Group on Household Income
Statistics” 43
Chapter 1 The Income Concept in EU-SILC: Relevance, Feasibility, Challenges
Paul VAN DER LAAN 45
Chapter 2 Comparability of income data across households/individuals and over time
Rolf AABERGE, Erik FJAERLI, Audun LANGøRGEN and Magne MOGSTAD 57
Discussion
Richard HAUSER 75
III EU-SILC and welfare measurement 81
Chapter 1 Extreme incomes and the estimation of poverty and inequality indicators from EU-SILC
Philippe VAN KERM 83
IV EU-SILC complex income components 95
Chapter 1 Measurement of property income in EU-SILC
Veli-Matti TÖRMÄLEHTO 97
Chapter 2 Assessing the distributional impact of “imputed rent” and “non-cash employee income”
in micro-data
Joachim R. FRICK, Jan GOEBEL and Markus M. GRABKA 117
Annex
Tables 135
Comparative EU statistics on Income and Living Conditions: Issues and Challenges 3
Chapter 3 Self-Employment Incomes in the Italian EU-SILC: Measurement and International
Comparability
Marco Di MARCO 143
Chapter 4 Income in EU-SILC – Net/Gross Conversion Techniques for Building and Using
EU-SILC Databases
Carlos FARINHA RODRIGUES 157
Discussion
Stephen P. JENKINS 173
V Non-income dimensions in EU-SILC 179
Chapter 1 Unmeet need for health care in europe
Xander KOOLMAN 181
Chapter 2 “Material deprivation and poor housing”
What can be learned from the EU-SILC 2004 data?
How can EU-SILC be improved in this matter?
Anne-Catherine GUIO and Isabelle ENGSTED MAQUET 193
Annex
Annexes 215
Chapter 3 The differential access of women and men to employment and income:
evidence from the EU-SILC
Terry WARD 229
Annex
Tables 247
Chapter 4 Social class variation in income poverty, deprivation and consistent poverty:
an analysis of EU-SILC
Christopher T. WHELAN, Dorothy WATSON and Bertrand MAITRE 259
Discussion
Brian NOLAN 279
VI Data quality and comparability in EU-SILC 283
Chapter 1 Issues in data quality and comparability in EU-SILC
Vijay VERMA 285
4 Comparative EU statistics on Income and Living Conditions: Issues and Challenges
Chapter 2 The EU-SILC in comparative income distribution research: design and defi nitions
in international perspective
Markus JÄNTTI 311
Discussion
Andrea BRANDOLINI 335
VII EU-SILC to be used for national and comparative EU monitoring of some key
aspects of social protection and social inclusion 343
Chapter 1 Using the EU-SILC for policy simulation: prospects, some limitations and
some sugestions
Francesco FIGARI, Horacio LEVY and Holly SUTHERLAND 345
Annex
Appendices 369
Conference conclusions: users’ recommendations and needs 378
Comparative EU statistics on Income and Living Conditions: Issues and Challenges 5
FOREWORD
Since 2005, the new EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) covers 25 European Union (EU) countries
as well as several non EU countries. EU-SILC, which replaces the EU-15 European Community Household Panel (ECHP),
has now become the EU reference source for comparative statistics on income, poverty and social exclusion, particularly
in the context of the Open Methods of Coordination on pensions and on social inclusion. On the one hand, EU-SILC raises
some new issues regarding the EU common indicators already in use - especially with regard to the income concept(s) to
be used for calculating the income-based indicators (as it follows closely -though not strictly- the recommendations of the
Canberra Group and therefore provides detailed information on income components, in both gross and net). On the other
hand, EU-SILC should allow to (better) address some policy areas that have not been (satisfactorily) covered to date.
From 6 to 8 November 2006, a conference entitled “Comparative EU-Statistics on Income and Living Conditions: Issues
and Challenges” was held in Helsinki. This meeting, which was followed by a methodological workshop, was jointly
organised by Eurostat and Statistics Finland. It brought together about 120 participants, producers as well as institutional
and academic users of the SILC instrument. The conference can be seen as a follow-up of the EU Luxembourg Presidency
Conference on “Taking forward the EU Social Inclusion Process” (Luxembourg, 13-14 June 2005) recommendation for
1
in-depth methodological studies around EU-SILC .
The Conference and the Methodological Workshop were a joint event by Eurostat and Statistics Finland. Statistics Finland
hosted the Conference and the Workshop, and was responsible for the local organisation.
This event was prepared together with a Scientifi c Committee which consisted of Tony Atkinson (Oxford University,
UK), Michel Glaude (EUROSTAT, European Commission), Markus Jäntti (Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland) and
Eric Marlier (CEPS/INSTEAD Research Institute, Luxembourg) and of a Programming Committee composed of Anne
Clémenceau (EUROSTAT, European Commission), Martin Bauer (Statistics Austria), Jean-Marc Museux (EUROSTAT,
European Commission), Hannele Sauli (Statistics Finland) and Paloma Seoane (Statistics Spain).
Academic experts in the fi eld of income measurement, social exclusion and living conditions analysis made substantive
contribution on the basis of their analysis of the EU-SILC micro database. Papers and presentations of the conference and
workshop are available on www.stat.fi /eusilc/ . The Conference sessions covered the following topics:
1. General presentation of EU-SILC, giving a general overview of the state of the art of the EU-SILC project.
2. Income measurement in EU-SILC
1 See http://www.ceps.lu/eu2005_lu/default.cfm for more information on this Conference (programme, interventions, conclusions and list of partici-
pants) and on the book The EU and Social Inclusion: Facing the Challenges [Marlier, Atkinson, Cantillon and Nolan, Bristol (2006), The Policy
Press] that was subsequently published.
This session put the focus on conceptual papers discussing pros and cons of the EU-SILC approach in various dimensions of
income measurement in the framework of policy assessment (Open Method of Coordination...) and academic research.
3. Non-income dimensions in EU-SILC
Non-income dimensions of EU-SILC were reviewed in assessing their ability to fulfi l the EU and country needs in terms
of other EU indicators for social inclusion. This session was oriented towards the recommendation of new/ revised EU
indicator(s) for social inclusion and the possible need to adjust the variables to be collected/ produced under EU-SILC...
building on the existing EU work.
4. Data quality and comparability in EU-SILC
This session concentrated on the several dimensions of quality, accuracy, coherence and comparability (main focus of
the session); both comparability between countries (trade-off between comparability and best national practice) and
comparability over time (transition from ECHP to EU-SILC) were considered.
5. EU-SILC to be used for national and comparative EU monitoring of some key aspects of social protection and
social inclusion
The purpose of this session was to identify the needs of institutional and academic users for monitoring and modelling
purposes (esp. in the context of the EU Social Protection and Social Inclusion Process), and to “benchmark” these needs
against the data currently available in EU-SILC. An outcome of this session was a set of concrete recommendations to
suggest ways of improving the EU-SILC instrument. Panellists reacted to the recommendations made in the previous
sessions and addressed the issue of the use of EU-SILC as an aid to making social protection and social inclusion policy.
The conference has proved to be of great value for discussing stakeholders’ needs and for providing directions for
improving the relevance of the instrument. Eurostat drafted an action plan for the next few years summarizing the main
recommendations of this Conference in order to be able to produce data of better quality, mainly in terms of comparability,
and to better fulfi ll the needs of the different users, i.e. Commission DGs, the scientifi c community and other international
organizations. This event has been a success thanks to the active contribution of all actors, speakers, discussants, chairs of
the different sessions, panelists and all participants.
8 Comparative EU statistics on Income and Living Conditions: Issues and Challenges
General presentation
of EU-SILC
I