Intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic conditions in Austria in the context of European welfare regimes

This paper uses data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) 2005 to analyze intergenerational income mobility in Austria compared to other European Union members. Applying various methodological approaches, the data reveal substantial differences in intergenerational income persistence across European welfare regimes. The results show that income class rigidities are much less evident in Nordic countries compared to other European countries including Austria

The Geography of Average Income and Inequality: Spatial Evidence from Austria

This paper investigates the nexus between regional income levels and inequality. We present a novel small-scale inequality database for Austrian municipalities to address this question. Our dataset combines individual tax data of Austrian wage tax payer on regionally disaggregated scale with census and geographical information. This setting allows us to investigate regional spillover effects of average income and various measures of income inequality. Using this data set we find distinct regional clusters of both high average wages and high earnings inequality in Austria. Furthermore we use spatial econometric regressions to quantify the effects between income levels and a number of inequality measures such as the Gini and 90/10 quantile ratios. (authors' abstract)Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Serie

Sozioökonomische Charakteristika der Millionärshaushalte in Österreich

Mithilfe der Vermögenserhebung HFCS 2010 können die sozioökonomischen Charakteristika der österreichischen Privathaushalte mit einem Nettovermögen von mehr als 1 Mio. Euro analysiert werden. Im Vergleich zur Zusammensetzung der Gesamtpopulation zeigt sich, dass Haushalte, deren HöchstverdienerIn einen akademischen Abschluss erzielt hat, selbstständig arbeitet, Betriebsvermögen in der Land- und Forstwirtschaft besitzt oder bereits eine Erbschaft erhalten hat, deutlich überrepräsentiert sind. Demgegenüber haben nur 2% der Unselbstständigen- Haushalte mehr als 1 Mio. Euro Nettovermögen und sind somit stark unterrepräsentiert, unabhängig von ihrem Bildungsgrad oder anderen sozioökonomischen Charakteristika. (authors' abstract

Bequests and the Accumulation of Wealth in the Eurozone

This paper empirically compares the contribution of the two major wealth accumulation factors - earned income and inheritances - to the net wealth position of households in the Eurozone. The elasticities of both wealth sources differ considerably across countries and are overly non-linear. Depending on the position in the wealth distribution, an increase of one percentile in the income distribution corresponds to 0.1-0.6 percentiles in the net wealth distribution. We find substantially stronger effects for inheritances vis-á-vis income. In Greece, Portugal, and Austria, households have to climb around three percentiles in the income distribution to compensate a one percentile increase in the inheritance distribution. The findings clearly suggest that bequests play a stronger role in wealth accumulation than earned income.Series: INEQ Working Paper Serie

What did you really earn last year?: explaining measurement error in survey income data

The paper analyses the sources of income measurement error in surveys with a unique data set. We use the Austrian 2008-2011 waves of the European Union "Statistics on income and living conditions" survey which provide individual information on wages, pensions and unemployment benefits from survey interviews and officially linked administrative records. Thus, we do not have to fall back on complex two-sample matching procedures like related studies. We empirically investigate four sources of measurement error, namely social desirabil- ity, sociodemographic characteristics of the respondent, the survey design and the presence of learning effects. We find strong evidence for a social desirability bias in income reporting, whereas the presence of learning effects is mixed and depends on the type of income under consideration. An Owen value decomposition reveals that social desirability is a major expla- nation of misreporting in wages and pensions, whereas sociodemographic characteristics are most relevant for mismatches in unemployment benefits

Über die Bedeutung von Kapitaleinkommen für die Einkommensverteilung Österreichs

(no abstract available

Quality Assessment of Imputations in Administrative Data

This article contributes a framework for the quality assessment of imputations within a broader structure to evaluate the quality of register-based data. Four quality-related hyperdimensions examine the data processing from the raw-data level to the final statistics. Our focus lies on the quality assessment of different imputation steps and their influence on overall data quality. We suggest classification rates as a measure of accuracy of imputation and derive several computational approaches. (authors' abstract

Vermögen und Reichtum in Österreich

Vermögen ist in Österreich sehr ungleich verteilt. Seit der HFCS-Vermögenserhebung der Oesterreichischen Nationalbank (OeNB) und von Wissenschaftler:innen durchgeführten Hochschätzungen lässt sich besser beziffern, wie groß die Vermögenskonzentration tatsächlich ist. Österreich steht innerhalb der Eurozone mit an der Spitze der Vermögensungleichheit. Die große Mehrheit der in Österreich lebenden Bevölkerung empfindet die bestehende Vermögensverteilung als ungerecht. Vermögensteuern sind ein Weg, die Schieflage zu reduzieren. Das reichste 1 % verfügt über rund 40 % des gesamten Nettovermögens, während die ärmere Hälfte gerade einmal 2,8 % des Nettovermögens besitzt. Die hohe Vermögenskonzentration hat negative wirtschaftliche, demokratiepolitische und ökologische Konsequenzen. Der Überreichtum kann durch Vermögenssteuern reduziert werden.In Austria, wealth is very unequally distributed. Thanks to the HFCS wealth survey conducted by the Austrian National Bank and projections by researchers, it has become easier to quantify the actual extent of wealth concentration. Regarding wealth, Austria is one of the most unequal countries in the Euro area. The vast majority of the population of Austria perceives the existing distribution of wealth as unfair. Wealth taxes are one way to reduce this imbalance. The richest 1 % owns around 40 % of the total net wealth, while the poorer half owns just 2.8 % of net wealth. High wealth concentration has negative impacts on economy, democracy, and the environment. Wealth concentration can be reduced through the introduction of wealth taxes

On Top of the Top - Adjusting wealth distributions using national rich lists

Poor coverage of the top in wealth surveys conceals the extent of wealth inequality. The literature mitigates this shortcoming by enriching survey data with rich lists and estimating the top tail with a Pareto distribution. However, recent studies rely on ad-hoc assumptions for some of the required parameters. We suggest a unified regression approach to estimate all parameters of a Pareto distribution jointly and extend our analysis with a more flexible three-parameter Generalized Pareto estimation. We introduce a new database of national rich lists (ERLDB) as an alternative to commonly used global rich lists to combine with survey data from the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS 2017). Our findings for 14 European countries show that wealth is more concentrated than surveys suggest, with almost doubling Top 1% shares in the most extreme cases. In contrast, countries with successful oversampling strategies tend to experience only minor changes in inequality metrics.Series: INEQ Working Paper Serie

The ocean sampling day consortium.

Ocean Sampling Day was initiated by the EU-funded Micro B3 (Marine Microbial Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Biotechnology) project to obtain a snapshot of the marine microbial biodiversity and function of the world's oceans. It is a simultaneous global mega-sequencing campaign aiming to generate the largest standardized microbial data set in a single day. This will be achievable only through the coordinated efforts of an Ocean Sampling Day Consortium, supportive partnerships and networks between sites. This commentary outlines the establishment, function and aims of the Consortium and describes our vision for a sustainable study of marine microbial communities and their embedded functional traits