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Developing a Pilot Social Accounting Matrix for the United Kingdom
An account of the development of a pilot UK Social Accounting Matrix that improves on previous work by developing a more detailed matrix that is consistent with the European System of Accounts.
This article summarises the development of a UK Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The UK has produed a pilot SAM for 1996 as a contribution to a Eurostat Leadership Group on Social Accounting Matrices. The methodology improves on evious work carried out by ONS by developing a SAM which is both more detailed and consistent with the European System of Accounts (ESA 95). A SAM is an analytical framework in which social and economic data are integrated and harmonised. As with all accounts the SAM balances. By expanding the detail of the breakdown, we introduce an element of social analysis. The current work uses a top-down approach. It was constructed in two stages. The first step was to create a National Accounting Matrix (NAM) by representing the traditional UK National Accounts in matrix form. The second stage disaggregated certain cells of the matrix using household surveys expanding the NAM into a full SAM.
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