Original Article: "Virtual Stastical System - SOCIAL ACCOUNTING" https://www.virtualstatisticalsystem.org/activities/activity/76-social-accounting-matrices/?no_cache=1&seltab=132&print=1
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An important part of the national accounts is SOCIAL ACCOUNTING.
The social accounts are expressed as social accounting matrices (SAM). A Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) represents flows of all economic transactions that take place within an economy (regional or national). It is at the core, a matrix representation of the National Accounts for a given country, but can be extended to include non-national accounting flows, and created for whole regions or areas. SAMs refer to a single year providing a static picture (or snapshot) of the economy.
The2008 SNA advises that such a matrix presentation is very powerful in terms of the flexibility it can encompass, and in displaying the interaction of the accounts in a compact and graphic manner. On the other hand, there are some disadvantages to the matrix presentation also:
a. Without explanatory text describing each of the main elements, a reader has to have a very good understanding of the SNA to interpret the numeric entries in the table.
b. Such a table always contains lots of white space which means that it is not an effective way of presenting a large amount of data.
In general, the matrix format is best used to explain the structure of the accounts being presented with individual cells, or a combination of cells, following in a more traditional format.
The 2008 SNA explains that both the supply- use tables and input-output tables are matrix representations of the SNA’s goods and services account. It is possible to cast the whole of the sequence of the accounts, including the goods and services account, in a matrix format also.
Such a matrix is called a social accounting matrix (SAM). The SNA goes on the describe how it is possible to extend and elaborate a SAM by introducing alternative disaggregations of existing flows or new types of flows, just as long as the use and resource of these flows balance in the usual way.
This is such a common extension of a SAM that the usual understanding of what a SAM is often goes further than a matrix encompassing the standard sequence of accounts to include extensions, particularly of the household sector.
The national accounting becomes social accounting when the focus is turned on the position of households in the economy. The Social Accounting Approach looks at the national economy from the position of the households. The households can be subdivided according to types of households.
