Final Report and Recommendations

Abstract

The initiative to organise an International Expert Group on Household Income Statistics was taken by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in order to work on the development of statistics on household economic well-being and particularly on household income. The initiative was a reaction to a growing awareness that, in advancing the quality of their own household income statistics, national statistical offices shared many problems. In particular the comparative OECD study on income distribution (Atkinson et al. 1995) triggered off a renewed discussion on the underlying quality and comparability of household income data. Expectations were that combining forces would help solve conceptual and methodological problems, and would thus result in more relevant and reliable national statistics which could also be used for international comparisons on income distribution. The International Expert Group met for the first time in Canberra, Australia and, taking its name from the venue of the First Meeting, is known as the ‘Canberra Group’. It follows a now well-established phenomenon of City-named Expert Groups set up under the auspices of the United Nations Statistical Commission. The tradition started with the Voorburg Group on service statistics, which was first set up in 1986 and first met in Voorburg, the Netherlands, in January 1987. According to the United Nations Statistical Commission the role of City Group is: • To contribute actively to the development of international standards in their respective areas of work, within the framework set by the international work programme; • To exchange best practices in their area of work; • To produce specific outputs (advice, classifications, manuals) requested by the Statistical Commission.