Legislation

Background information

The EU regulation 2019/1700 covers the following seven domains:

1. labour force
2. income and living conditions
3. health
4. education and training
5. use of information and communication technologies
6. time use
7. consumption

EU regulation 2019/1700 specifies for each domain the following key elements: the statistical population, observation units, sample frame, sample characteristics, precision requirements, topics and detailed topics, data transmission deadlines and periodicity.

The EU-SILC is a multi-purpose survey covering mainly the income and living conditions domain within the scope of the IESS regulation.

The EU-SILC survey is a key instrument to provide information required by the European Semester and the European Pillar of Social Rights, in particular on income distribution, poverty and social exclusion as well as on various topics related to living conditions and EU policies.

The European Commission specifies every year the technical items of the data set related to modules to ensure the accurate implementation of the sample survey for the income and living conditions domain.

In EU-SILC, there are three type of modules: (1) every three years, (2) every six years and (3) ad-hoc subject / policy need modules.

1. The topics of the modules taking place every three years are ‘Labour Market and Housing’, ‘Health’ and ‘Children’.
2. The topics of the modules taking place every six years are ‘Intergenerational transmission of disadvantages and Housing difficulties’, ‘Over-indebtedness, consumption and wealth’, ‘Access to services’ and ‘Quality of life’.
3. Every second year starting from 2021, ad-hoc subject modules / policy need modules are included in EU-SILC. The aim of these modules is to provide timely information on specific area of interest.

The following implementing regulations provided further specifications for the implementation of EU-SILC (presented by short name in chronological order):

• Definitions, amended by derogation on gross income data, listing the main basic definitions (household member, income) to be used in EU-SILC
• Fieldwork and imputation procedures
• Sampling and tracing rules
• List of permanent variables, giving the list of variables which are to be collected every year (so-called primary variables)
• Quality reports
• New material deprivation items from 2016 onwards

In addition, some regulations introduced variables which were collected every four or five years, so-called secondary variables.

List of annual ad-hoc modules, presented by short name in inverse chronological order:

• 2020: Over-indebtedness, consumption and wealth as well as labour
• 2019: Intergenerational transmission of disadvantages, household composition and evolution of income 
• 2018: Material deprivation, well-being and housing difficulties
• 2017: Health and children's health
• 2016: Access to services
• 2015: Social and cultural participation and material deprivation
• 2014: Material deprivation
• 2013: Well-being
• 2012: Housing conditions
• 2011: Intergenerational transmission of disadvantages
• 2010: Intra-household sharing of resources
• 2009: Material deprivation
• 2008: Over-indebtedness and financial exclusion
• 2007: Housing conditions
• 2006: Social participation
• 2005: Intergenerational transmission of poverty

Further information and documents

• ESS agreement on health priority (2nd priority variables), labour, over-indebtedness, consumption and wealth, SILC 2017
• ESS agreement material deprivation variables, SILC 2013
• EEA agreement
• The agreement between the European Community and the Swiss Confederation