Towards a System of Distributional National Accounts

A renovated approach to the measurement of economic inequality consistent with macro aggregates should rebuild the bridges between distributional data available from micro sources and national accounts aggregates in a systematic way. This is the main goal pursued through DINA-Distributional National Accounts. The aim is to provide annual estimates of the distribution of income and wealth using concepts that are consistent with the macroeconomic national accounts. In this way, the analysis of growth and inequality can be carried over in a coherent framework. This endeavour also involves the production of synthetic micro-files (i.e. individual level data that are not necessarily the result of direct observation but rather through estimations that reproduce the observed distribution of the underlying data, including the joint distribution of age, gender, numbers of dependent children, income and wealth between adult individuals) providing information on income and wealth, which will also be made available online. The global aim is to release income and wealth synthetic DINA micro-files for all countries on an annual basis. Such data will certainly play a critical role in the public debate, and will be used as a resource for further analysis by various actors in civil society and in the academic, business and political communities.