Income and wealth in the Irish longitudinal study on ageing

Between 2009 and 2011, data were collected under the first wave of The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA). Over 8,500 people aged 50 and over and living in Ireland were interviewed about a wide range of topics covering socio-economic and health issues. Our primary goals in this paper are to present details on two of the variables which will be of particular interest to economists, namely income and wealth, and to discuss issues in relation to their use. We describe how the income and wealth data were collected. We assess the quality of the income data by comparing them to those obtained through the European Union Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). We examine the joint distribution of income and assets and conduct a small exercise on using the data to design a means-testing system.