Merz: The Distribution of Income of Self-employed, Entrepreneurs and Professions
3 Income Data from Surveys - The Situation in Germany
Having in mind the problems encountered with income data for the self-employed in
particular, we briefly sketch the income data situation in Germany in view of our
purpose.
In Germany there are various statistics with information about the individual income
situation where self-employment and only sometimes professions are coded within the
occupational status of the interviewed person. There are large samples like the yearly
Microcensus (based on a one-week sampling period) provided by the Federal Statistical
Office, a 1% sample of all ca 80 Mio. German inhabitants, with income data only in
brackets. Another large sample of the official statistics is the Income and Consumption
Survey (Einkommen und Verbrauchsstichprobe, EVS) which comprises detailed income
information with certain periods within a year with more detailled information of more
than 40.000 households every four years. On the other hand, there are numerous non-
official surveys with more or less detailed income information according to interest.
One important survey of these is the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), where
each year more than 8.000 households provide not only current income data but within
the calendarium further income data of different sources for each of the last 12 months
are provided.
Whereas for employees the actual income information in all of these data sources is
more or less readily available, the information for the self-employed - and among these
for professions (freelancer, liberal professions, ‘Freie Berufe’), too - is in many aspects
unknown. Due to the tax system with all its deductions and regulations in particular for
the self-employed, in all surveys current income is only approximatly available for the
interviewed person at the survey time; and accurate, actual income is only possible to be
asked for the past (if at all).
Thus, self-employed income data from sample surveys, in principle, provides limited
information with regard to the real situation.
The diverse regulations to calculate income and all the efforts for the further tax
calculations - in particular for the self-employed - are the reasons for the relatively long
delay of official income statistics within the framework of the German tax statistics.
However, one of the more promising data bases for our purpose are data from
compulsory tax statistics. In particular, the most reliable income data for the self-
employed (and for other socio-economic groups) will be the German Income Tax
Statistic (Einkommensteuerstatistik), which will be the further data base of our study.