By Caterina Viviano (ISTAT- Italy)

21° Meeting of the Wiesbaden Group on BR-Roundtable on Business Survey Frames

Session 5: Projects on the Improvement of Business Registers

The setting up of Farm Register: the production process to building up the prototype of the pre-census list

Paris, November 24-27, 2008

Contents:21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

1. Background

2. The input sources description

3. The production process to build up the prototype list – pre-treatment and integration of sources

4. The pre-census prototype-list : the quality survey

5. Timetable and future work

Background21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

To enlarge the statistical register system to the sector of agriculture (European regulations)

To exploit all information available into administrative sources

To improve the quality of agricultural statistics

To introduce innovations concerning aspects of the Census survey: the use of lists as a support for the survey

The project to build up the Farm Register: phases21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

Building up of the prototype-list of agricultural

holdingsPHASE 1

PHASE 2sample survey to test the

quality and coverage of the prototype list

PHASE 3

Realization of the pre-census list of agricultural

holdings

Census of Agriculture

PHASE 5

PHASE 4

Setting up of the Farm Register

The input sources description 21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

Specific – sectoral sources1. The Integrated Administration and Control System

(AGEA)2. The System for the Identification and Registration of

Bovine Animals and other species (AA.ZZ.)3. Lands’ property Incomes (Tax Agency)4. The Land registry5. Agricultural self-employed workers (Social Security)6. Regional agricultural Systems.

General sources7. Chambers of Commerce (CCIAA)8. Fiscal register (VAT)

Additional statistical sources9. BR10. The Census of Agriculture 2000

The Integrated Administration and Control System (AGEA)21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

System of files managed by AGEA i.e. the Italian Paying Agency

Recorded unit: agricultural holding obliged to present for any aid application

That unit file is constituted the first time a request of premium is presented

Updating is made on the basis of yearly requests of aid

The Integrated Administration and Control System (AGEA)21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

Information content 1 - identification data: Unique Code of Agricultural Holdings (CUAA code) i.e. the fiscal code of the holder, holder’s name, permanent address or place of residence, VAT number if present, dates of inscription and updating

2 - territorial data: agricultural parcels managed by the farmer, use of each parcel (crops, livestock), hectares invested by type of product, fiscal code of landholders if different from the holder

For the 2006/2007 agricultural season: Ident. info = 1,9 millions record Territorial info = 19.3 millions record

Land’s property income21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

Data managed by the Tax Agency

Recorded unit: tax payer declaring income derived from landlord’s rights and/or agricultural activities

Declaration models and their sections Type of model main section other sections

Natural persons

income from agricultural activities, landlords' rights livestocks

1. participation in partnerships or others 2. dependent relatives

Simple partneships

Non profit institutions

Income earned by employees, retired persons

agricultural income, by declarant and his spose

income from agricultural activities, landlords' rights holidays farm

Land’s property income21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

Type of model Records   Natural persons 8,933,520Simple Partnerships 54,462Non profit institutions 13,562Income earned by employees 2,986,031

In figures …

The System for the Identification and Registration of Bovine Animals and other species (AA.ZZ.)

21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

Data managed by the Ministry of Welfare

Recorded unit: animals and their holders with the scope to preserve public health. The covered animal species are bovines, pigs, sheep and goats, poultry, equines

The national database of Bovine Animals realized in accordance with the EC n. 1760/2000 for the setting up of a System for the Identification and Registration of Bovine Animals, is the only fully operative register up to date

For sheep and goats the existing regulation (EC n. 21/2004) toset up a register is not yet fully operative

No regulations for others species

The System for the Identification and Registration of Bovine Animals and other species (AA.ZZ.)

21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

1) Bovines =239,304 2) Speep and goats =148,894 3) Pigs =89,332 4) Poultry =18,0625) Equides =29,706

In figures …

The Land registry21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

Unit information:

1) parcels referring to land: parcel identification codes, parcel characteristics like “soil quality” (i.e. land devoted to vineyard or sowable ground), hectare, estimated agricultural income

2) their owners: natural person -name, surname, sex, birth date, fiscal code – juridical person – name, fiscal code

3) their ownership’s title: land’s rights (property, usufruct), property share and property settlement.

The Land registry21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

Many advantages….but also many problems such as:

files organized by municipality enormous variety of information difficult to treat the parcel’s owner cannot be the holder updating is not homogenous soil quality could not be updated difficult to identify agricultural uses only

summary21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

Source Administrative unit

AGEA Farmer or agricultural holding

AAZZ Livestock holder

Land’s income Natural/juridical person

Ch.Com. Enterprise /local unit

VAT Legal unit

Social Security Farmer or agricultural worker

Land registry Parcels’ owner

Statistical unit compliance

high

high

low

high

high

low

low

Coveragetheor. real

T Pundercoverage

Ts Ts

T Tovercoverage

P P

P PTs Ts

Ts Tsovercoverage

Characteristics of sources – units and coverage

T=Total – Ts=Total for the reference population – P=partial

The production process21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

Phase 1 – The pre-treatment of each administrative file

Phase 2 – The physical integration: the intra-archive link the link among different archives

Phase 3 – The units identification process

Prototype list

The production process21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

The integration strategy:

a) AGEA, used as pivotb) Three initial basic sources: AGEA-AA.ZZ.-Land’s

property income, treated according to a linkage process that uses all available matching keys so that links among records can be classified:

Direct link: a match between the primary key of AGEA and the primary key of the other source.

Indirect link: a match between the primary key of AGEA and the secondary keys of the other source.

Complex link: a match between the secondary key of AGEA and the primary/secondary key of the other source.

c) Hierarchical integration of the other 6 sources d) Land registry integrated by parcel and owner’s fiscal code

The pre-treatment process21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

AGEA – Unit identification

Primary key= CUAA Secondary key = landowner’s fiscal code

declaring Primary key CUAA Agricultural lands

holder ∈ Secondary key Fiscal codes landowners

The pre-treatment process21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

Land’s property income – Unit identification

Primary key= taxpayer’s fiscal code Secondary keys = dependent relative and participated firm’s

fiscal code

- intra m odels linkage- duplication resolution

Taxpayer recordsdependent

re la tives

F irm s

Taking part o f

declaring

Cluster code

Taxpayer code

Relative code

fam ily re lation

partic ipated firrm code

1 AA ZZ child1 AA BB husband BB1 BB ZZ child1 BB AA wife

CLUSTER

- intra m odels linkage- duplication resolution

Taxpayer recordsdependent

re la tives

F irm s

Taking part o f

declaring

Cluster code

Taxpayer code

Relative code

fam ily re lation

partic ipated firrm code

1 AA ZZ child1 AA BB husband BB1 BB ZZ child1 BB AA wife

CLUSTER

- intra m odels linkage- duplication resolution

Taxpayer recordsdependent

re la tives

F irm s

Taking part o f

declaring

Cluster code

Taxpayer code

Relative code

fam ily re lation

partic ipated firrm code

1 AA ZZ child1 AA BB husband BB1 BB ZZ child1 BB AA wife

CLUSTER

- intra m odels linkage- duplication resolution

Taxpayer recordsdependent

re la tives

F irm s

Taking part o f

declaring

Cluster code

Taxpayer code

Relative code

fam ily re lation

partic ipated firrm code

1 AA ZZ child1 AA BB husband BB1 BB ZZ child1 BB AA wife

CLUSTER

- intra models linkage- duplication resolution

Taxpayer recordsdependent

relatives

Firms

Taking part of

declaring

C lus ter code

Taxpayer code

R elative code

fam ily relation

partic ipated f irrm code

1 A A ZZ child1 A A B B husband B B1 B B ZZ child1 B B A A wife

CLUSTER

The integration process21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

Structure of matched records:

A potential agricultural unit corresponds to any integrated record (single record i.e. a CUAA/Fiscal code) or to any group of records (a cluster). In the latter case the link among fiscal codes must be verified on the field.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Unit AGEA AA.ZZ. RA CCIAA VAT Land CENS INPS BR REGIO.. 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0k 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0

0=absance 0=absence 0=absance 0=absence 0=absance 0=absence 0=absance 0=absence 0=absance 0=absence

1=presence 1=presence 1=presence 1=presence 1=presence 1=presence 1=presence 1=presence 1=presence 1=presence

The unit’s characters21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

Unit’s attributes: identification (i.e location) and stratification variables: • taken from input sources: i.e. agricultural utilized area (hectares)• derived from deterministic methods: indicator of existence, eligibility degree, belonging to a cluster (familiar links)

Problems: measurement errors, missing data, coverage

Decision: No threshold applied, any unit belongs to the prototype list BUT with different quality i.e. with different signals to be an agricultural holding

The quality survey21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

To test on the field the prototype-list with the aim to (re)-define the correct statistical model to set up the final pre-census list for 2010

Checks to evaluate:

the correct use of administrative sources

the integration methodology

the units’ identification

the criteria for data imputation

The statistical methodologies to identify the census universe

The quality survey21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

The prototype list is composed by 7 sub-lists:I) the integrated AGEA-based list (1)II) the integrated not AGEA-based list:

- Residuals of land’s property income with agricultural signals (2)

- Residual of CCIAA / VAT with agricultural activity, secondary or primary (3)

- Residual of CCIAA without agricultural activity but with lands from the land registry (4)

- Residual of CCIAA / VAT with agricultural activity but with lands from the land registry (5)

- Other land’s property income records without agricultural signals but with lands from the land registry (6)

- Residual of lands from the land registry only (7)

The probability a unit be an agricultural holding decreases starting from list 1.

The quality survey21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

Constrains:

a) 80 municipalities chosen on the basis of the national agricultural structure

b) 120,000 units created by the prototype list

c) Sample size: 16,000

Sample design: two stages stratified sample 1 stage: chosen municipalities 2 stage: units are chosen according to an allocation method

proportional to each sub-list size

Purpose: to select a high percentage of less “elegible” (uncertain) units (70% of the sample)

survey technique - face-to-face interviews carried out in the unit’s residence place asking information about all lands and livestock

21th Meeting of Wiesbaden Group on BR – Roundtable

on Business Survey Frames

Paris, November, 2008

Timing

First prototype list realization - end September 2008 (agricultural data referred to years 2006/2007)

Quality survey launched beginning November 2008

Results of the survey foreseen - end March 2009

Updated second prototype list – end April 2009

Ex post reconciliation between survey results and the second prototype list– by June 2009

Pre Census final list – by April 2010

Census of Agriculture – October 2010

After…The Farm Register

Timetable and future work