Oversampling the wealthy in Italy: Some proposals

The design of the Survey of Households Income and Wealth (SHIW) dates back to the end of 80’s. Although the SHIW is a multi-purpose survey, its design was mainly focused on household income. Some changes that have occurred in recent years suggest a revision of the SHIW design: Italy has experienced an increase in wealth inequality and there has been a significant increase
in the complexity and in the size of household financial portfolios and liabilities. The main objective of this paper is therefore to propose some strategies to over-sample wealthy Italian households. Three main strategies to overcome the absence of a complete list of wealthy households are outlined and evaluated, namely the use of: records coming
from indebted households of the Bank of Italy Central Credit Register; information on average house prices gathered from the Real Estate Market Observatory; and data from the Private Banking sector.