Combining household survey and tax data for measuring income inequality in Russia

The paper presents an approach to better account of the top-income groups in measuring income inequality in Russia. There has been a number of suggested approaches to deal with this problem using household income surveys, administrative sources — mainly tax data, and also combination of different data sources. In this paper, we present a solution based on combining of microdata of the Statistical Survey of Income and Participation in Social Programs (SSIPSP) and tax data. In experimental calculations we use tax data to correct income from paid employment as the most significant source of livelihood for the most of the population. The results of the correction are extended on the household and per capita income. The study has shown that the adjustment of the distribution of income with use of tax data occurs in the group with very high income representing less than 2% of the population. Applying correction at the microdata level makes it possible to obtain more complete estimates of income inequality not only for the population as a whole, but also for some social strata.