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IPS102 Peter V. et al.
4. The results of the exercise show that in general all countries are able
to comply with the methodology. Furthermore, countries have micro data
available for most of the national accounts items and in case of lacking
data, imputations lead to comparable results. However, the results also
show that in some cases gaps between the micro aggregates and the
national accounts totals can be quite substantial, possibly affecting the
overall distributional results. In the remainder of this short paper, the
methodology to arrive at distributional measures consistent with national
accounts are discussed in Section 2, while some results are presented in
Section 3. Session 4 discusses the way forward.

2. Methodology
5. The main objective of the OECD-Eurostat Expert Group on Disparities
within National Accounts (EG DNA) is to arrive at a consistent set of data
on the distribution of income, consumption, saving and wealth, by
bridging the gaps between the micro-data and the macro-data from
national accounts. An additional objective is to develop methodologies for
estimating more timely distributional information, by combining more
recent macro-data with the less timely micro-data. This section focuses on
the main methodologies. It does not pay attention to the nowcasting
techniques that are in the process of being developed; for more
information on this topic, reference is made to Zwijnenburg (2016).
6. The expert group elaborated a preliminary methodology, on the basis
of which first experimental results were compiled in 2013 (see Fesseau and
Mattonetti, 2013). Subsequently, the group further elaborated and
improved the methodology, and published results in a second exercise
conducted in 2015 (see Zwijnenburg et al., 2017). The more general goal
of the work is to break down the results for the household sector, as
included in the national accounts, into more detailed household groups.
Currently the project aims at a breakdown according to so-called
equivalized disposable income (see below) into five income quintiles; main
source of income into four groups; and household composition into eight
groups. However, other and more granular breakdowns can also be
envisaged, depending on the level of detail and quality of the underlying
data, and the robustness of the methodology in combining micro data
with national accounts totals. In breaking down the household sector, the
project currently focuses on household income, consumption and saving,
but in the future the aim is to also include breakdowns of wealth, in order
to have a full and consistent set of accounts for the various household
groups.
7. In line with the international standards for compiling national accounts,
the 2008 System of National Accounts (2008 SNA), the EG DNA project

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