The integration of economic and social statistics – General issues

Abstract

Important issues arise in translating into practice the accepted need for an improved integration of economic and social statistics. The more general of these issues in integration concern more than one field of social statistics. The growing emergence and use of micro-data creates the need for their integration with macrodata bases. Of particular importance are time use surveys, as their integration into the existing body of socio-economic statistics would offer new and improved uses of these data. Comparisons of data on health, education and housing as presented in national accounts on one hand with data from different sources on the other shed light on a number of ambiguities, discrepancies and gaps. The issues affecting integration in this respect include final consumption and expenditure, the functional classification of expenditure or consumption and total consumption of the population. Solutions to the problems of integration can be found in several ways, including the development of satellite accounts