Metadata on OECD database on income distribution and povertyhttp://www.oecd.org/social/soc/IDD-Metadata.pdfOECD Income Distribution Database Gini poverty income Methods and Conceptshttp://www.oecd.org/social/income-distribution-database.htmNew results Rising inequality youth and poor fall further behindhttp://www.oecd.org/social/soc/OECD2014-Income-Inequality-Update.pdfRecommended uses and limitations

Guide to OECD Social and Welfare Statisticshttp://ukdataservice.ac.uk/use-data/guides/dataset/social-welfare.aspxQuality comments

The OECD Income Distribution database (IDD) has been developed to benchmark and monitor countries’ performance in the field of income inequality and poverty. It contains a number of standardised indicators based on the central concept of “equivalised household disposable income”, i.e. the total income received by the households less the current taxes and transfers they pay, adjusted for household size with an equivalence scale. While household income is only one of the factors shaping people’s economic well-being, it is also the one for which comparable data for all OECD countries are most common. Income distribution has a long-standing tradition among household-level statistics, with regular data collections going back to the 1980s (and sometimes earlier) in many OECD countries.

Achieving comparability in this field is a challenge, as national practices differ widely in terms of concepts, measures, and statistical sources. In order to maximise international comparability as well as inter-temporal consistency of data, the IDD data collection and compilation process is based on a common set of statistical conventions (e.g. on income concepts and components). The information obtained by the OECD through a network of national data providers, via a standardized questionnaire, is based on national sources that are deemed to be most representative for each country.