Appendix A: Data sources
This paper follows a method similar to that of Aziz et al. (2012) in utilising Treasury's non-behavioural microsimulation model, Taxwell, to analyse the incidence of tax and government spending. These models use the Household Economic Survey (HES) as the primary dataset. The HES provides “comprehensive survey information about income and expenditure by New Zealand's normally resident population living in private dwellings.” While a shortened form of HES is carried out every year, a more comprehensive HES with information on household income and expenditure is undertaken every three years. This study uses the 2009/10 HES - the latest dataset that contains information on both income and expenditure.
HES 2009/10 contains data on the income and consumption patterns of 8,074 individuals, 4,012 families and 3,126 households. It provides a detailed breakdown of income and combines this information with household demographic data.
To model the incidence of government spending this analysis combines the HES with data from the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education and the Department of Building and Housing. This expanded dataset is used to calculate the market, disposable and final incomes of individuals, families and/or households.
