IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/9779.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Mind the Gap : Disparities in Assessments of Living Standards Using National Accounts and Household Surveys

Author

Listed:
  • Prydz,Espen Beer,Jolliffe,Dean Mitchell,Serajuddin,Umar

Abstract

Estimates of average per capita consumption and income from national accounts differ substantially from corresponding measures of consumption and income from household surveys. Using a new compilation of more than 2,000 household surveys matched to national accounts data, this study finds that the gaps between the data sources are larger and more robust than previously established. Means of household consumption estimated from surveys are, on average, 20 percent lower than corresponding means from national accounts. The gap with gross domestic product per capita is nearly 50 percent. The gaps have increased in recent decades and are largest in middle-income countries, where annualized growth rates for consumption surveys are systematically lower than national accounts growth rates. The paper shows that the gaps in measures across these two sources have implications for assessments of economic growth, poverty, and inequality. The study finds that typical survey measures of consumption and income may exaggerate poverty reduction and underestimate inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Prydz,Espen Beer,Jolliffe,Dean Mitchell,Serajuddin,Umar, 2021. "Mind the Gap : Disparities in Assessments of Living Standards Using National Accounts and Household Surveys," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9779, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9779
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/505211632322896934/pdf/Mind-the-Gap-Disparities-in-Assessments-of-Living-Standards-Using-National-Accounts-and-Household-Surveys.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Francisco H. G. Ferreira & Shaohua Chen & Andrew Dabalen & Yuri Dikhanov & Nada Hamadeh & Dean Jolliffe & Ambar Narayan & Espen Beer Prydz & Ana Revenga & Prem Sangraula & Umar Serajuddin & Nobuo Yosh, 2016. "A global count of the extreme poor in 2012: data issues, methodology and initial results," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 14(2), pages 141-172, June.
    2. Joachim Winter, 2004. "Response bias in survey-based measures of household consumption," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 3(9), pages 1-12.
    3. Newhouse,David Locke & Vyas,Pallavi, 2019. "Estimating Poverty in India without Expenditure Data : A Survey-to-Survey Imputation Approach," Policy Research Working Paper Series 8878, The World Bank.
    4. Michael Artis & Massimiliano Marcellino, 2001. "Fiscal forecasting: The track record of the IMF, OECD and EC," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 4(1), pages 20-36.
    5. Christoph Lakner & Branko Milanovic, 2016. "Global Income Distribution: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the Great Recession," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 30(2), pages 203-232.
    6. Sudhir Anand & Paul Segal, 2008. "What Do We Know about Global Income Inequality?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(1), pages 57-94, March.
    7. Atkinson, A. B. & Piketty, Thomas (ed.), 2007. "Top Incomes Over the Twentieth Century: A Contrast Between Continental European and English-Speaking Countries," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199286881.
    8. Dean Jolliffe & Espen Beer Prydz, 2016. "Estimating international poverty lines from comparable national thresholds," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 14(2), pages 185-198, June.
    9. Palma, J.G., 2011. "Homogeneous middles vs. heterogeneous tails, and the end of the ‘Inverted-U’: the share of the rich is what it's all about," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1111, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kibrom A Abay & Nishant Yonzan & Sikandra Kurdi & Kibrom Tafere, 2023. "Revisiting Poverty Trends and the Role of Social Protection Systems in Africa during the COVID-19 Pandemic," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 32(Supplemen), pages 44-68.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Prydz, Espen Beer & Jolliffe, Dean & Serajuddin, Umar, 2021. "Mind the Gap," GLO Discussion Paper Series 944, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    2. Espen Beer Prydz & Dean Jolliffe & Umar Serajuddin, 2022. "Disparities in Assessments of Living Standards Using National Accounts and Household Surveys," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 68(S2), pages 385-420, December.
    3. Christoph Lakner & Daniel Gerszon Mahler & Mario Negre & Espen Beer Prydz, 2022. "How much does reducing inequality matter for global poverty?," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 20(3), pages 559-585, September.
    4. Benoit Decerf & Mery Ferrando, 2020. "Income Poverty has been Halved in the Developing World, even when Accounting for Relative Poverty," Working Papers 546, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    5. Jordá, Vanesa & Niño-Zarazúa, Miguel, 2019. "Global inequality: How large is the effect of top incomes?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 1-1.
    6. Lahoti Rahul & Jayadev Arjun & Reddy Sanjay, 2016. "The Global Consumption and Income Project (GCIP): An Overview," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 61-108, June.
    7. Anand, Sudhir & Segal, Paul, 2017. "Who Are the Global Top 1%?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 111-126.
    8. Facundo Alvaredo & Leonardo Gasparini, 2013. "Recent Trends in Inequality and Poverty in Developing Countries," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0151, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    9. Anthony Shorrocks & James Davies, 2018. "Comparing global inequality of income and wealth," WIDER Working Paper Series 160, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    10. Jordá, Vanesa & Niño-Zarazúa, Miguel, 2019. "Global inequality: How large is the effect of top incomes?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 1-1.
    11. Leonardo Raffo-López & Edwin Arbey Hernández-García, 2021. "Comercio internacional, prosperidad y desigualdad en la globalización," Apuntes del Cenes, Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia, vol. 40(71), pages 133-164, February.
    12. Benoit Decerf & Mery Ferrando, 2022. "Unambiguous Trends Combining Absolute and Relative Income Poverty: New Results and Global Application," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 36(3), pages 605-628.
    13. Nora Lustig, 2018. "Measuring the Distribution of Household Income, Consumption and Wealth: State of Play and Measurement Challenges," Working Papers 1801, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    14. Anand, Sudhir & Segal, Paul, 2017. "Who are the global top 1%?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 101816, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    15. Segal, Paul, 2020. "Inequality as entitlements over labour," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 104083, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    16. , Stone Center & Segal, Paul, 2020. "Inequality as Entitlements over Labor," SocArXiv x9fhq, Center for Open Science.
    17. Raymundo M. Campos-Vazquez & Emmanuel Chavez & Gerardo Esquivel, 2016. "Estimating top income shares without tax return data: Mexico since the 1990s," Serie documentos de trabajo del Centro de Estudios Económicos 2016-04, El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos.
    18. Clare Leaver & Paul Segal, 2014. "The Global Distribution of Income," Economics Series Working Papers 714, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    19. Moatsos, Michail, 2020. "Global Absolute Poverty: The Evolution of its Measurement," EconStor Preprints 216642, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    20. Mahler,Daniel Gerszon & Yonzan,Nishant & Lakner,Christoph, 2022. "The Impact of COVID-19 on Global Inequality and Poverty," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10198, The World Bank.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:9779. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.