UKHLS Innovation Panel household wealth questions: preliminary analysis

Abstract

This analysis examines Innovation Panel Wave 3 (IP3) data concerning the collection of information on household wealth. We compare household savings and investment obtained from four different questionnaire designs against the UK Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS) and the original British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) protocol. Results suggest that an approach requiring each individual in the household to report on savings and a single individual within the household to report on investments provides consistently better data with little difference in administration burden over the current BHPS design. Therefore, this approach is recommended for Understanding Society Wave 4.