RDP 2022-06: Do Australian Households Borrow to Keep up with the Joneses? Read me file

Kim Nguyen

November 2022

This ‘read me’ file details the replication files for RDP 2022-06. The ‘Data’ folder contains Stata's dta files. The ‘Codes’ folder contains Stata's do files that are used to produce the results presented in the paper and the appendices. The Stata codes were run on Stata MP 16 (64 bit).

The codes are distributed as is, without warranty, and are solely for the purpose of replicating the results. Any alternative use of the code is not supported.

Folder structure

The main folder contains the ‘rdp-2022-06-read-me.pdf’.

It also contains the following folders:

Data

ABS: Data file ‘inequalitysa3.dta’ (and its csv version ‘inequalitysa3.csv’) contains the ABS information on the distribution of personal income in Australia at the SA3 level, including measures of inequality (Gini coefficient, top 10 share of income). This is used to create the maps in Figures 1 and 2.

HILDA: The majority of the analysis presented in the paper comes from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. The HILDA Survey provides individual-longitudinal level data. Data from the HILDA Survey is available to researchers living in Australia or overseas. Data may only be accessed through the National Centre for Longitudinal Data Dataverse. For more information on data access, please see <https://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/hilda/for-data-users>.

CoreLogic: The data obtained from CoreLogic is not publically available due to third party copyright.

Codes

This folder contains the files you can use to reproduce the analysis, including:

  • 01. HILDA merge code – individuals.do: merges individual level data from all waves of HILDA.
  • 02. HILDA merge code – households.do: constructs and follows households from individual data.
  • 03. Setup variables.do: cleans and constructs variables for analysis, produces summary statistics tables (Tables 1, A1 and A2) and Figure 3.
  • 04. Main analysis.do: produces the main regressions results in the paper (Tables 2 to 5).
  • Files from ‘Appendix Table B1.do’ to ‘Appendix Table B11.do’: produce Tables B1 to B11 in Appendix B.

10 November 2022

  • Supplementary information Download 570KB

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