Analysing the spatial distribution of wealth in Spain: estimations of regional asset-poverty rates and net wealthpoverty rates.

Abstract

The increasing concentration of wealth distribution is becoming a very important issue in the analysis of inequality. The need to include wealth in the household inequality analysis is calling attention nowadays. However, there are no datasets that provide the level of geographical detail needed to analyse differences across the Spanish regions. This paper aims to fill this gap by the analysis of Spanish households. The methodology applied estimates asset-poverty indicators for the 17 Spanish NUTS2 regions by combining the use of the Survey of Household Finances (EFF) produced by the Bank of Spain (where the wealth indicators are observable at a national scale) and the Living Conditions Survey (SILC). In the second database the same variables we use from the first database are included with the advantage that in this one the variables are disaggregated according to autonomous communities. The main novelties of the proposed technique are the consistency of geographical mapping output with national aggregates, and it does not require strong distributional assumptions. According to this, we develop an analysis of the regional heterogeneity in the distribution of wealth from the Spanish households.