Understanding Household Finance through Better Measurement

到目前为止，英国(或其他发达国家)还没有对同一家庭的收入、支出、资产和债务进行调查。这些数据限制了我们对生活水平动态的理解。例如，英国和其他国家的支出调查显示，收入最低的家庭的支出与收入高得多的家庭一样多。然而，目前尚不清楚这一模式是支出或收入计量错误的结果，还是反映了真正的借款或不储蓄。除了收入和支出，拥有一段时间内家庭资产和债务的数据，将使分析师能够解开这个谜团。了解家庭的支出、储蓄和借款对于评估经济增长的可持续性至关重要，包括当前的复苏是否受到不可持续的消费者支出的推动。还有其他类似的未解之谜。例如，在调查数据中，较富裕的家庭将更大比例的收入存起来，但总储蓄率并没有随着实际收入的增加而随着时间的推移而增加。这种差异可能再次是由于测量误差或反映真实行为。更好地了解家庭财务状况将有助于更清楚地了解哪些家庭处于不利地位，以及优势和劣势如何在时间和世代之间累积。现有调查没有收集到家庭财务状况的所有方面的数据，原因是这需要非常长的问卷调查。这将是昂贵的进行和受访者的负担。通过主题专家、调查方法专家和商业市场研究专家之间的跨学科合作，我们的目标是开发数据收集方法，以降低成本和受访者负担，同时保持或提高每个数据组成部分的质量。我们将开发一项网络调查，其核心将是一个对账屏幕，受访者被要求平衡其收入、支出、资产和债务的总额。我们将重复这项调查，以测试通过纳入前一次采访的信息来促进和解的潜力。为了缩短调查的时间，我们将在调查前评估收集家庭财务组成部分的方法，使用已经在商业市场研究中常规使用的新技术。这些数据将预先载入网络调查问卷，并纳入对账屏幕。我们将探讨不同潜在技术的可行性、数据质量和成本，包括通过被动捕获数据来减轻受访者负担的技术。例如，条形码扫描仪收集详细的支出数据，对收银机收据进行编码，链接到存储卡数据，或要求调查受访者注册“财务聚合器”服务并将数据转发给我们。为了帮助受访者在网上调查中提供更准确的报告，我们还将评估在重要日期触发即时调查的可能性，例如自我评估纳税申报单或税收抵免续期的截止日期，届时受调查者子组将更好地了解他们的收入，以及利用“游戏化”元素增加受访者对调查的参与度和减轻负担的可能性。我们将通过检查家庭会计身份的平衡和个别组成部分的质量来评估用不同方法获得的数据的质量。为了向开发工作和方法测试提供信息，我们将在现有的调查(理解社会创新小组)中进行试验，以测试旨在减少少报收入的方法。此外，我们将利用现有的数据源进行二次分析。我们将应用生成的数据来理解当前家庭财务中的谜题，并将数据提供给该领域的其他研究人员。

To date there are no surveys in the UK (or other developed countries) that measure income, expenditure, assets and debts for the same households. These data limitations constrain our understanding of the dynamics of living standards. For example, expenditure surveys in the UK and other countries suggest that households with the lowest incomes spend as much as households with much higher incomes. It is however not known whether this pattern is the result of measurement error in expenditure or income or whether it reflects genuine borrowing or dissaving. Having data about the assets and debts of a household over time, in addition to income and expenditure, would enable analysts to resolve this puzzle. Understanding the spending, saving and borrowing of households is critical for assessing the sustainability of economic growth, including whether the current recovery is fuelled by unsustainable consumer spending. There are other similar unresolved puzzles. For example, in survey data richer households save larger proportions of their income, however aggregate savings rates have not increased over time as real incomes have increased. This discrepancy could again be due to measurement error or reflect true behaviours. A better understanding of household finances will allow a clearer picture of which households are disadvantaged, and how advantage and disadvantage cumulate across time and generations.The reason why no existing survey collects data about all aspects of a household's finances is because it would take a very long questionnaire. This would be costly to conduct and burdensome for respondents. Through interdisciplinary collaboration between topic experts, survey methodologists and experts in commercial market research, we aim to develop methods of data collection that reduce costs and respondent burden, while maintaining or improving the quality of each data component. We will develop a web survey that will have at its core a reconciliation screen where respondents are asked to balance the totals of their income, expenditure, assets and debts. We will repeat this survey, to test the potential of boosting the reconciliation by incorporating information from the previous interview. To reduce the length of the survey we will assess ways of collecting components of household finances prior to the survey, using new technologies already routinely used in commercial market research. These data would be preloaded into the web questionnaire and incorporated into the reconciliation screen. We will explore the feasibility, data quality and costs of different potential technologies, including technologies that would reduce respondent burden by capturing data passively. For example, barcode scanners to collect detailed expenditure data, coding of till receipts, linking to store card data, or asking survey respondents to sign up to a "financial aggregator" service and relaying the data to us. To help respondents provide more accurate reports in the web survey we will also assess the potential for in-the-moment surveys triggered at salient dates such as the deadline for self-assessment tax returns or tax credit renewals, when sub-groups of respondents will have better knowledge of their income, and the potential for using elements of 'gamification' to increase respondent engagement with the survey and reduce burden. We will assess the quality of data obtained with different methods by examining the balance of the household accounting identity and the quality of individual components. To inform the development work and methodological tests we will carry out experiments in an existing survey (the Understanding Society Innovation Panel) to test methods aimed at reducing under-reporting of income. In addition, we will carry out secondary analyses using existing data sources. We will apply the data generated to understanding current puzzles in household finances, and make the data available to other researchers in this area.