Income and Wealth Study 1986-2003, Household File - Wealth

Statistics Norway have conducted comprehensive Income and wealth studies in 1958, 1962, 1967, 1970, 1973, 1976, 1979 and 1982. From 1984 and onwards, Statistics Norway changed to a system of yearly surveys, the change was mainly the size of the sample and problems concerning sample selection, and not so much about the information collected. The information collected is mainly decided by the information available in public tax assessment data. The income and wealth studies should not be considered normal sample surveys, as they are based on a sample drawn from the Norwegian Tax Administrations registers. That means that foreign nationals are included if they are registered in the central personal data register, which they normally would be if they have working and residence permits. Children born in the course of the year will be included no matter the date of birth and likewise will persons that died in the course of the year.

The aim of the Income and Wealth surveys has been to shed light on the income conditions for the whole population and for different groups. One main objective is to produce statistics of households that live and eat together and to provide an overview of the distribution of persons and household by income size, socioeconomic groupings, household types, geography and so forth. Another main objective is to collect income and wealth data as a background for the survey on living conditions and consumer expenditure surveys. In addition, in the years following 1992, a reform of the taxation system had been conducted, which also made it important to collect information in order to study the implications of the reform, also for self-employed persons, and an integration of a larger study of these conditions were included especially. Information concerning all forms of income, wealth, tax deductions, disposable income for single persons and for households were collected. Some information is connected from other registers, which includes among other things marital status and family composition, while information concerning household composition was obtained through interviews. Family is a narrower term than household is, a family can consist of singles, an unmarried father or mother with children, or married couples with or without children. A household consists of, on the other hand, all persons that live and eat together, and can therefore consist of several families. Experience shows that approximately 90 % of all households only consists of one family. (Notater 98/11 SSB 1998: Inntekts- og formuesundersøkelsen 1995). Tax-exempted income, as for example benefits of a social character, gifts and winnings are not included because of the tax assessment regulations. Rules for imputed rental value of property, valuation of benefits in kind, private withdrawals, devaluations and so forth are also creating some problems.

This cumulative file contains data from the income and wealth studies for the income years 1986-2003. The units are households. Further, the dataset is divided into one file for income and one file for wealth. This file contains data concerning wealth.