Income imputation in the SHS and SHCS: examining the feasibility of using the FRS to broaden the measure of household income.
During autumn 2008 the Scottish Government commissioned a feasibility study into the possibility of using data from the Family Resources Survey to improve the quality of income estimates produced from the Scottish Household Survey (SHS) and Scottish House Condition Survey (SHCS). The work also included examining the way in which income data in the SHS and SHCS were recorded and processed.
The full report is available to download from the following link: Full Report
A brief summary follows:
Summary and recommendations
- Differences in the estimates of household income between the FRS and the SHS/ SHCS are driven primarily by the inclusion of income of 'other adult' - adults who are not the Household Reference Person (HRP) or their spouse - in the FRS. Other methodological and definitional differences have a much smaller effect on the estimate of household income.
- Overall, even though the FRS questionnaire is almost twice the length of the SHS, once this difference has been accounted for, the estimates for income levels in Scotland are very similar.
- Around half of the variation in the income of other adults in the FRS can be accounted for by variables that are common to both the FRS and the SHS/ SHCS. The main drivers of income that could be used in an imputation strategy are economic status and relationship to the HRP. Less variation in income levels within different economic statuses can be explained by variables common to all three surveys.
- It is feasible to impute reasonable approximations of income for other adults in the SHS and SHCS to produce estimates of household income that will be robust at the national and local authority level. Imputation of income of other adults will increase the mean estimate of household income across Scotland by around 9%.
- There are no major practical barriers to imputing income of other adults in the SHS and the SHCS. However, the need to use case level data from the FRS would mean that the estimates of the broader definition of household income, based on the imputed data, would only be available one year after the existing estimates are released.
- A number of other recommendations are made to improve the estimates of household income in the SHS and the SHCS.
Further Information
Scottish Household Survey
Scottish House Condition Survey
DWP Family Resources Survey
Poverty Estimates for Scotland