Discrepancies between official EU-SILC-based indicators produced by Eurostat and those produced with EUROMOD can be due to:
- Simulation vs. self-reporting. Discrepancies can arise as EU-SILC disposable income components are self-reported or based on administrative sources, whereas EUROMOD simulates taxes, social insurance contributions, and benefits according to the policy rules modelled.
- Underlying assumptions. The standard assumptions in EUROMOD of full benefit take-up and zero tax evasion can lead to more egalitarian disposable income distributions and lower poverty rates compared to EU-SILC measurement results.
- Data processing. EUROMOD input data are derived from the EUROMOD SILC Database (EMSD) produced by Eurostat. Additional consistency checks applied during this process, such as excluding children born after the income reference period and rejoining household splits, will result in differences in household composition and equivalised disposable income with respect to EU-SILC.
- Imputation of missing values. To enable simulations, the preparation of EUROMOD input data employs imputation techniques to address missing values existing in EU-SILC data.
- EU-SILC wave. In EUROMOD the most recent policy years may run with older waves of EU-SILC. For example, in the release J1.0+ EUROMOD indicators for 2021-2024 are based on input data derived from the 2022 wave of EU-SILC, which were the latest available at that time.
- EU-SILC version. Discrepancies may occur due to the time lag between EU-SILC revisions and their incorporation into EUROMOD. This may cause indicators to be calculated based on different data versions.
- Definition of household disposable income. Differently from EU-SILC, in EUROMOD the definition of household disposable income excludes non-cash components of employment income (for example the value of company cars). This can potentially lead to lower median disposable income in EUROMOD than in EU-SILC.