The authors analyse ways to measure the lot of low-income households by comparing data from a range of weekly and annual income surveys; expenditure and income surveys; income survey data and administrative data from government transfer records; and income survey data with income expected from eligibility criteria.
The report finds that factors affecting measurements of the circumstance of low-income households include:
- conceptual issues such as the choice of the most appropriate unit of observation, period of observation, metric of measurement and source of data; and
- practical issues including changing circumstances, underreporting of income, between-household transfers of income and consumption goods, and issues concerned with household definition.
Full paper:
Understanding and improving data quality relating to low-income households