Accuracy and reliability

Overall accuracy

There are many wealth components and the expected accuracy varies between them. The value of Real estate, cars, pensions and unlisted stocks are all estimated based on various assumptions. The exact value is not known at the individual level. The quality of Financial data and debts are much better as the data is collected and checked by the tax authorities. The same goes for pensions wealth which is checked thoroughly by statistics Denmark and the Danish National Bank. The statistics only includes assets and debt that can be assigned to specific persons. Thus the statistics does not include the value of Cash, Crypto currencies, paintings, furniture and some wealth components abroad. The wealth has been top-coded at the individual level. The threshold is DKK 1.9 billion and leads to an overall underestimation of wealth of DKK 210 billion in 2023 out of the total net wealth of DKK 9,507 billions.

The estimation of payouts from aldersopsparing is not very precise as it is very difficult to distinguish loses from payouts. Read more in Danish in the paper Estimering af aldersopsparing

Sampling error

Not relevant for these statistics.

Non-sampling error

The value in owned property is based on the public evaluations that have been shown to occasionally be severely inaccurate at the individual level. The model that re-calculate evaluations to market prices cannot compensate for this. The valuation of cars and unlisted cars are also uncertain. The value of life-time pensions depends heavily on assumptions about the average lifespans and age of retirement. Assets not registered by the authorities are not in the statistics. This includes "hidden" wealth abroad, stocks of cash. In 2023, property values are based on temporary data derived from the Danish Tax Agency's new property data system. This leads to poorer address matching between residences and the civil registration system, resulting in property values amounting to approximately DKK 20 billion being shifted from A.1 (primary residences) to A.4 (other residences).

Quality management

Statistics Denmark follows the recommendations on organisation and management of quality given in the Code of Practice for European Statistics (CoP) and the implementation guidelines given in the Quality Assurance Framework of the European Statistical System (QAF). A Working Group on Quality and a central quality assurance function have been established to continuously carry through control of products and processes.

Quality assurance

Statistics Denmark follows the principles in the Code of Practice for European Statistics (CoP) and uses the Quality Assurance Framework of the European Statistical System (QAF) for the implementation of the principles. This involves continuous decentralized and central control of products and processes based on documentation following international standards. The central quality assurance function reports to the Working Group on Quality. Reports include suggestions for improvement that are assessed, decided and subsequently implemented.

Quality assessment

The quality of data varies dependent on the type of component. Financial components are assumed to collectively be of high quality as data that are relevant to tax payments are verified by the tax administration albeit the distinction between the individual components may not be perfect, if the distinction does not serve an administrative purpose. But incorrect codes have been utilized – especially in areas that do not have direct administrative importance. This could have as consequences that sums move between individual components if the person registering the data uses and invalid code. The ladder should not affect the total assets or debt. While ownership is based on solid register data, the values of houses and cars are imputed based on sales prices and used car prices. These evaluations might be uncertain. Finally note, that not all types of wealth and debt are covered.

Data revision - policy

Statistics Denmark revises published figures in accordance with the Revision Policy for Statistics Denmark. The common procedures and principles of the Revision Policy are for some statistics supplemented by a specific revision practice.

Data revision practice

The wealth statistics are published in November following the end of the year. As part of this publication, the previous year's data is revised, so that it is based on the most recent available data foundation.

Statistics on pension wealth is published in June and revised in August/September if there are better data available.

The statistics remains under development. Revisions can occur to the degree that we post-publication receive significantly better data or that we make improvements of the statistics. Latest a major revision was done in December of 2022. Read about it in this paper on the revision, Danish only In august 2022 the distribution of pension bonuses was revised in the statistics on pension wealth. In 2020 the value of civil servant pensions and shared housing communities (andelsboliger) was revised. In all cases the revisions has been carried out until 2014, where possible.