Information on data
Data on income and living conditions come from the EU-Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) data collection.
For more information, please click on the headings below.
The EU-SILC is the EU reference source for comparative statistics on income distribution and social inclusion at the European level. It provides two types of annual data for the countries of the European Union, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Türkiye:
- cross-sectional data: these refer to a given time or a certain time / period.
- longitudinal data: these refer to individual-level changes over time and they are observed over a four to six year period.
EU-SILC is a household and individual data collection which output is harmonised as it is regulated by legislations. Around 90% of the data collection is made up of annual variables. The rest are either modules that are collected every three or six years or modules conducted ad-hoc to reply to policy needs. Data about individuals and households are send to Eurostat by the participating countries respecting legal deadlines and agreed guidelines and procedures.
Additional data on living conditions can also be found in other statistical domains, notably in the thematic sections on population, health, education and training, and labour market on the Eurostat website.
The reference period is the time to which a particular information relates. It is defined separately for each variable depending on its collection and its use.
In EU-SILC, the reference period of income refers to the calendar year before the year in which the survey took place.
In line with EU regulation 2019/1700, the EU-SILC data collected shall be based on representative samples. These shall be drawn from sampling frames set up at national level which allow persons or households to be selected at random, with a known probability of selection.
The sampling frames shall aim to identify and cover the target population exhaustively, with the usual accepted coverage error. They shall be regularly updated. The sampling frames shall contain all the necessary information for the sample design, such as information needed for stratification purposes and for contacting the persons or households.
The reference population includes all private households and their current members who are residing in the territory of the countries at the time of the data collection. All household members are surveyed, but only those aged 16 or older are interviewed.
Persons living in collective households or institutions are excluded from the target population.
Small parts of a national territory amounting to no more than 2% of the national population may be excluded from EU-SILC, as well as French overseas departments and territories. Both shall not be excluded from the survey at the same time.
The datasets in Eurostat’s database are updated as soon as new data are transmitted by participating countries and have been validated by Eurostat. For information on the legal framework related to the data transmission, please see our legislation page, in particular EU regulation 2019/1700.
For detailed information about significant data changes and breaks in time series, please consult our file overview of breaks in series.
For scientific purposes only, access to anonymised microdata is possible under specific conditions.
Estimates for the aggregates of the European Union (EU) and Euro area (EA) are calculated if the data for an indicator cover 70% or more of the EU/EA population.
Indicators are computed as the population-weighted average of national indicators.