Methodological Appendix: the Bank of Italy's Survey of Household Income and Wealth

Individual determinants of social behavior

“…This survey is conduced every two years by the Bank of Italy on a representative sample of about 8,000 households: see Brandolini and Cannari (1994) for details.…”

Retirement expectations, pension reforms, and their impact on private wealth accumulation

“…These variables are related to household resources, but may also capture other effects. For instance, there is evidence that the better educated are more likely to report financial assets (Brandolini and Cannari, 1994); households with higher education may have easier access to capital markets and to better investment opportunities; thrift may be correlated with schooling. Finally, the wealth-income ratio for public employees is not statistically different from that of private employees but the self-employed have a higher wealth-income ratio.…”

Intertemporal Choice and Consumption Mobility

“…3 The net response rate (ratio of responses to contacted households net of ineligible units) was 64 percent in 1987, 38 percent in 1989, 33 percent in 1991, 58 percent in 1993, and 57 percent in 1995. Ample details on sampling, response rates, processing of results and comparison of survey data with macroeconomic data are provided by Brandolini and Cannari (1994). 4 To minimize measurement error we exclude cases in which the head changes over the sample period or gives inconsistent age figures.…”