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IPS102 Arjan B.
researchers are also limited by the data availability of pension entitlements.
Saez and Zucman (2016) solve the absence of observed wealth by capitalizing
income flows for the United States. This allows them to analyse a time series
going back to 1913. They acknowledge the importance of pension
entitlements by imputing a distribution of the SNA pension entitlements,
based upon distributions of wages and pension benefits. Other studies use
survey data on wealth (Vermeulen, 2018), often limited by the absence of the
very wealthy, or data on pension wealth.
Van Bavel and Frankema (2017) argue that wealth inequality in the
Netherlands, just as in other welfare states, is relatively high, while income
inequality is low. They call this the inequality paradox of Northern European
welfare states, and suggest that one of the reasons might be that households’
asset portfolios miss the large collective arrangements. Wilterdink (2015)
mentions that international comparisons of wealth inequality is difficult,
because of data availability, quality issues in both micro and macro data, but
also due to the different approaches in the unit of observation. The author
does mention that developments over time are less hampered by these
limitations. However, where pension entitlements decrease inequality, the
influence of these entitlements on developments remains unclear (Wilterdink,
2015, p.358).

2. Methodology
The starting point of our methodology is the household database as
described by Bruil (2018). This database, in which all Dutch residents are
included, covers the entire SNA household sector. For each individual it is
known to which household he or she belongs. For all the individuals and
households the sector accounts are constructed, using a large number of
micro data sources. These data sources are linked, preferably using a record
linking technique, using a personal identifier that is unique over all data sets.
Data sources that do not consist this personal identifier are imputed in the
dataset using a common characteristic of the household, individual, or group
of individuals. We add the balance sheets, using the wealth components from
the Integral Income and Wealth Studies (IIWS), the Pension Claims Statistics
(PCS), and the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). For the
extended net worth concept we add public pension entitlements as well,
following the methodology laid out in the Technical Compilation Guide
(Eurostat, European Central Bank, 2011) and the further work carried out for
the Netherlands (CBS, 2018). Where disposable income is constructed from
micro data, this is not possible for net worth because of timeliness of the
microdata. We use the microdata to breakdown the balance sheets.
The IIWS is an integral register, largely based on tax records. It covers the
wealth on the first of January, which corresponds with the opening balance

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