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IPS102 Ilja K. K. et al.
with Eurostat has established an expert group investigating how to add
distributional information in the National Accounts (NA). Eurostat and the
European Statistical System have agreed in the “Vienna Memorandum” in
2016 to work towards this objective. Both of these initiatives are focusing on
consumption, income and saving. The European Central Bank (ECB)
coordinates the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS),
conducted in the euro area as well as in several other EU countries, and
produces the quarterly Financial Accounts (FA), both of which provide
information on wealth.
The Statistics Committee (STC) of the ECB established in December 2015
the Expert Group on Linking Macro and Micro Data for the Household Sector
(EG-LMM). Its first mandate focused on comparing and bridging the FA and
HFCS. The EG-LMM submitted in March 2017 its final report covering the work
conducted during the first mandate to the STC and it was agreed that the
group will continue by further closing the gaps between the two statistics, by
developing further the FA breakdowns which could be estimated by using this
link and additionally, consider methods how to estimate time series for these
breakdowns. This group delivered its final report by summer 2019.
This paper describes the work of the EG-LMM under its two mandates. In
the next section the methodology of this work is summarised. This work has
two dimensions. The first dimension is the results calculated at the ECB which
are based on the linkage between FA and HFCS data and simple proportional
allocation. The second dimension is the methodological work in which the EG
provided a methodology and software code for the countries which allow
estimating the distributional results and making corrections for instance for
under-reporting and the under-coverage of rich households in the survey
data. This approach also allows adjusting the estimation method depending
on the available auxiliary data. The third section briefly shows preliminary
results of the proportional method and the impact of the corrections for
under-reporting and under-coverage of wealthy households. Finally, the
fourth section concludes and presents further work recommended on the
topic.

2. Methodology
First, the project focused on analysing generic differences between macro
and micro statistics and then to adjust those to the extent possible. The
following clear generic differences were identified: (1.) aim and set up of the
statistics; (2.) definition of household; (3.) periodicity, timeliness and reference
period; and (4.) valuation.
The aim and set up refers mainly to the fact that the FA is made to cover
sectoral interlinkages and the balance sheet interlinkages between economic
sectors while the HFCS is mainly focused on producing information on the

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