Statistics on income and living conditions
Public microdata, also referred to as public use files, for EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) were created to enable interested parties to become familiar with microdata.
At the same time, the privacy of respondents had to be protected. The structure of public microdata is the same as that of research microdata, also called scientific use files. Public microdata enable researchers and trainers to develop programmes using the same formats and variable names as for the actual scientific use files.
SILC public microdata files are fully synthetic. This means that they do not represent actual observations, but were simulated using statistical modelling and the statistical distributions in the original data.
Public microdata are used for the following purposes:
- statistical training at all levels
- allow researchers to explore the content and complexity of the survey prior to requesting access to confidential microdata
- enable accredited researchers to develop and write a code that might one day be applied to the scientific use files.
Public microdata cannot be used for statistical inference about the wider population. No generalised statements about individual characteristics or relationships between different personal or household characteristics should be made based on these data.
Only scientific use files should be used for publications as they are the only ones that can be used for valid analysis. Any calculations based on public microdata, or any conclusions drawn from them are at the sole risk and responsibility of the user. The national statistical institutes and Eurostat are not responsible for any improper use of these data and cannot guarantee the accuracy or reliability of results.
Public use files are developed in accordance with article 19 of Regulation 223/2009 on European statistics. It stipulates that the files should be prepared in such a way that the statistical unit cannot be identified.
For each country and year, the data are grouped into 4 files: household register (D), personal register (R), household data (H) and personal data (P). A detailed description of the variables is available in the annual guidelines.
The files do not contain flags that explain the status of the data cells, for example explaining why data is missing or that data has been estimated. Such flags do not convey clear information as the individual data are based on a model.
Public microdata are published for a limited number of countries and years. Please consult our datasets availability table. The data are in CSV format (comma-separated values) and grouped by country and year.
The SILC public use files metadata contains the accompanying metadata. When downloading it, you'll need to enable macros to ensure full functionality. Read the instructions on the worksheet called ‘Homepage’ and compile your query using the series of check boxes.
