Proposal Description

The growing demand for high-quality statistics on the distribution of household wealth has placed Distributional Wealth Accounts (DWA) at the forefront of international statistical developments. By combining macroeconomic aggregates with microdata from household surveys and administrative sources, DWA provide a coherent framework for measuring wealth disparities and monitoring their evolution over time.
This session will bring together researchers, statisticians and policymakers to discuss recent methodological advances, practical implementation issues and international experiences in the compilation and use of Distributional Wealth Accounts.
The session will cover key aspects of DWA compilation, including methodological advances in compilation techniques; the integration of household survey, administrative and macroeconomic data sources; the measurement of top wealth holdings, calibration methods and under-coverage adjustments; issues of cross-country comparability, harmonisation and international standards; recent empirical evidence on wealth inequality across countries and population groups; national and international experiences in developing DWA frameworks; the integration of distributional wealth and income accounts to provide a more comprehensive picture of economic inequalities. The session will combine international and national perspectives, including contributions on the G20 Data Gaps Initiative, and country experiences from Europe and emerging economies. There will also be a presentation by the South African Reserve Bank (speaker to be confirmed) which will illustrate the development of Distributional Wealth Accounts in South Africa and the challenges encountered in an emerging economy.