The Construction of Gross Income Variables of Eusilc (Eu Statistics on Income and Living Conditions) in Italy: A Mixed Strategy Using Microsimulation and Administrative Data

According to the EU Regulation on European Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), Italy will provide household gross income statistics starting from survey year 2007. Since in Italy both survey and fiscal data are used for the construction of the EU-SILC target variables, for the netgross conversion of income variables, Istat has experimented a new methodology using in conjunction a microsimulation model (Siena Micro-Simulation Model SM2- EU-SILC) and an exact record linkage between survey and fiscal data at micro level. The integration of microsimulation with register data has the advantage of using administrative data for the validation of microsimulation results. Since tax data have un incomplete coverage in respects of all surveyed individuals or in respects of some kind of social insurance contributions (i.e. employers’ contribution), SM2-EU-SILC could estimate those taxes and social insurance contributions not covered by register data. Finally, the use of microsimulation and administrative data improves the quality and the amount of information on gross income. This paper summarises the data production process and its main results, focussing on the joint use of SM2-EU SILC and on the records linkage between survey and administrative data as well.