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Using EUROMOD to nowcast risk of poverty in the EU. Jekaterina Navicke, Olga Rastrigina and Holly Sutherland ISER, University of Essex 2013 EUROMOD research workshop Lisbon, 2 October 2013. Outline:. Motivation & aim Context Toolbox Results Further steps. Motivation & aim.
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Using EUROMOD to nowcast risk of poverty in the EU Jekaterina Navicke, Olga Rastrigina and Holly Sutherland ISER, University of Essex 2013 EUROMOD research workshop Lisbon, 2 October 2013
Outline: • Motivation & aim • Context • Toolbox • Results • Further steps
Motivation & aim • Problem: 2-3-year time lag in the production of EU-SILC statistics • Timely indicators would: • Promote distributional issues when assessing current socio-economic conditions • Facilitate monitoring of current policy reforms/problems • Help assess progress towards Europe 2020 target • Not a substitute for more timely data collection and processing! • As any forecast should be treated with caution • Aims: • To predict what the EU-SILC will show when the data on current income are available • To develop methods that can be applied quickly and updated easily for EU27 • To estimate the direction and scale of movement of key income-based indicators (median, risk-of-poverty, inequality, etc.)
Context: • Dec 2012: paper at the NetSILC2 conference • develop the method • tested on EU-SILC 2008 (2007 income) • 8 countries: Estonia, Greece, Spain, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Romania • nowcast for 2010-2012 • Eurostat working paper: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-RA-13-010/EN/KS-RA-13-010-EN.PDF • July 2013: EUROMOD working paper • focus on validation • https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/publications/working-papers/euromod/em11-13 • By Dec 2013: SSM research note (work in progress) • improvements to current methodology • application on EU-SILC 2010 (2009 income) • more countries (+ Germany, Finland, …) • nowcast 2011-2013
Toolbox: • EUROMOD simulation • Adjusting EUROMOD to account for employment changes • Calibration to align EUROMOD and EU-SILC • No data adjustments to account for demographic changes • Ad hoc and country specific adjustments kept to the minimum
Toolbox (1): EUROMOD simulation • EUROMOD - static tax-benefit microsimulation model for the EU: • Unique: consistent results across 27 Member States • Operates on anonymized EU-SILC cross-sectional micro-data • Scope: income taxes, social contributions and cash benefits • For details see EUROMOD Country Reports: https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/euromod/resources-for-euromod-users/country-reports • Simulation: • Tax and benefit policies simulated up to 2012 (as of June 30th); • Non-simulated benefits and original incomes are updated from 2007 to 2012 using indexes (earnings, CPI etc.) plus official projections. Updating disaggregated where possible (e.g. earnings by sector).
Fig 1 Nominal proportional changes in average gross employment income (EUROMOD and EU-SILC) and compensation per employee (AMECO), EUR Notes: Chain growth. EU-SILC numbers are lagged by one year to correspond to the income reference year. Statistics on compensation per employee obtained from the annual macro-economic dataset of DG ECFIN (AMECO).
Toolbox (2): Employment Adjustments • Adjusting EUROMOD input data (SILC 2008) for employment changes (2008-2012) • Based on LFS data: • Trade-off between more up-to-date and more detailed data • We use published LFS employment figures (in 2012: annual up to 2011 & rolling quarterly average for 2012) • Concepts do not align perfectly between SILC and LFS => • = > Aim is not to align LFS and SILC, but model relative changes • Steps: • modelling employment transitions (net changes in employment rates modelled within 18 stratum by age, gender, educational status: random selection + 200 replications for more robust results) • modelling share of long-term unemployment to capture changes in eligibility for benefit receipt (similar method) • adjusting labour market characteristics in the EUROMOD data & simulating benefits.
Fig 2 Employment rates in the LFS, EU-SILC and in EUROMOD before and after labour market adjustmentsNotes: EU-SILC numbers are lagged by one year to correspond to the income reference year.
Toolbox (3): Calibration to EU-SILC • Estimates based on EUROMOD diverge from EUROSTAT even in the baseline year. Sources of discrepancy include (Figari et al. 2012): • Version of the SILC data • Slightly different definition of disposable income • Non take-up or leakage of means-tested benefits; tax evasion. • Reporting errors in the data or reference time period mismatches • Simulation error due to low quality or lack of information in the data • EUROMOD adjusts household composition to correspond to income year (babies born since income reference period are dropped) • Calibration: • Household-specific calibration factor • Factor is calculated based on 2007 income data and applied to 2008-2012 • Calibration on average improves predictions of both levels and changes
Results (1): POVERTY RISKFig 3 EUROMOD 2007-2012 and EU-SILC 2007-2010: At risk of poverty rates (using 60% median as the threshold)Notes: EU-SILC numbers are lagged by one year to correspond to the income reference year
Results (2): NOWCAST We focus on direction and scale of movement in indicators relative to the latest available EU-SILC estimates (not on 2012 levels). 3 main reasons for this: • Discrepancies between the EUROMOD and EU-SILC estimates still remain after adjusting for employment and calibration. • Wide confidence intervals around AROP point estimates in the EU-SILC: (standard errors vary from 0.4 pp for IT, ES to 0.9 pp for LT). • Nowcasts of direction and scale of change are more reliable: reduction in the standard errors due to covariance in the data.
Results (3): NOWCASTED CHANGEChange in 2010-2012 (i.e. since the income year of latest SILC statistics) Notes: *** p < 0.001, ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05. Information on the sample design of EU-SILC 2008 used for calculations was derived following Goedemé (2010) and using do files Svyset EU-SILC 2008 provided at: http://www.ua.ac.be/main.aspx?c=tim.goedeme&n=95420. Standard errors around AROP indicators are based on the Taylor linearization using the DASP module for Stata.
Results (4): NOWCASTED LEVELSWhat EU-SILC 2013 will show (2012 income) Notes: Household incomes are equivalized using the modified OECD scale. Median income in Euro per year. Change in 2010-2012 applied on the latest EU-SILC statistics.
Further steps (methodological improvements) • Select cases for employment transitions based on estimated conditional probabilities of being in a particular employment status • occupational decision models (e.g. Habib et.al. 2010, Ferreira et.al. 2004) • estimation based on the latest EU-SILC microdata • Logit model for predicting employment/non-employment estimated separately for those with low/high education, age frame 15-64: • predictors: sex, age, years of education, occupational status as measured by ISCO, dependency ratio in a household, participation rate, dummies for hh head, employed partner, small children under 4; squares, interactions. • combine with published LFS employment statistics (as currently) • Modeling new wages needs refinement: • Currently based on average wage within the stratum • Refining this using wage equations • Reweighting • for changes in employment and/or demographics • Other?
Thank you!Your comments are welcomed! Jekaterina Navicke: jnavicke@essex.ac.uk
Fig 4 EUROMOD 2007-2012 and EU-SILC 2007-2010: Median equivalized household disposable income (EUR per year)Note: SILC data corresponds to the income reference period.
Fig 5 EUROMOD 2007-2012 and EU-SILC 2007-2010: At risk of poverty rates (using 60% median as the threshold) Notes:Confidence intervals for EUROMOD estimates are due to a random element in the simulation of employment transitions and do not account for sampling variability. Confidence intervals for EU-SILC estimates of at risk of poverty rates are constructed based on the standard errors provided in Comparative EU Intermediate Quality Reports for EU-SILC 2008-2010 (Available at: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/income_social_inclusion_living_conditions/quality/eu_quality_reports).
Fig 6 EUROMOD 2007 -2012: At risk of poverty rates by household type (using 60% of the 2007 median as the threshold)Note: The poverty threshold is 60% of median 2007 equivalised household income, indexed by the HCPI
Growth incidence curvesChange in real income by percentile, 2010-2012 Note: based on re-ranked distribution