Archive:Living conditions statistics introduced

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Latest update of text: June 2017

Planned article update: October 2018

The demand for statistics on living conditions received added impetus following the introduction of the social chapter in the Amsterdam Treaty (1997) which became a driving force for the development of social statistics in the European Union (EU). It was reinforced by successive European Councils that kept the social dimension high on the political agenda, while the Lisbon strategy for jobs and growth and the Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth both focused attention on preserving and further developing Europe’s unique social model, through trying to optimise employment, productivity and social cohesion.

A number of ‘European years’ have highlighted various aspects that are linked to living conditions in the EU, for example: the European year of equal opportunities for all (2007), the European year for combating poverty and social exclusion (2010), the European year of active ageing (2012), or the European year of focused action to fight violence against women (2017).

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Europe 2020

The Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth put forward by the European Commission provides a growth strategy for the current decade. The European platform against poverty and social exclusion is one of seven flagship initiatives — its goals include:

ensuring economic, social and territorial cohesion;
guaranteeing respect for the fundamental rights of people experiencing poverty and social exclusion, and enabling them to live in dignity and take an active part in society;
mobilising support to help people integrate into the communities where they live, get training and help them to find a job and have access to social benefits.

The platform is based on five key areas for action:

delivering actions across the whole policy spectrum: for example, the labour market, minimum income support, healthcare, education, housing and access to basic banking accounts;
better use of EU funds to support social inclusion, for example, using the European Social Fund to combat poverty and social exclusion;
promoting robust evidence of what does and does not work in social policy innovations;
working in partnership with civil society to support more effectively the implementation of social policy reforms;
enhancing policy coordination among EU Member States.

To measure the progress being made, one of the five headline targets that form part of the Europe 2020 strategy is for there to be at least 20 million fewer people in or at-risk-of-poverty and social exclusion across the EU by 2020; this goal was subsequently translated into national targets for individual EU Member States, reflecting their specific challenges and circumstances.

The European Semester provides the framework for monitoring economic and social reforms with respect to pursuing the Europe 2020 targets. The poverty target promotes a stronger emphasis on social issues, as outlined in successive Annual Growth Surveys and Joint Employment Reports released by the European Commission. Indeed, there has been increasing concern over the persistently high levels of inequality found across the EU which, among others, may reduce the output of the economy and the potential for sustainable growth. As such these developments not only raise concerns in terms of social fairness, but also in economic terms (the under-utilisation of human capital).

European pillar of social rights

Policymakers have subsequently addressed broader issues to build a more inclusive and sustainable growth model through promoting competitiveness and making the EU a better place to invest, create jobs and foster social cohesion. The European pillar of social rights lays down a set of principles to support fair and well-functioning labour markets and welfare systems; it is designed to stimulate a renewed process of convergence towards better living and working conditions. While most of the tools for such changes remain in the hands of the individual EU Member States, social partners and civil society, the European Commission also plays a role by setting the framework and giving directions. Although primarily conceived for the euro area, the European pillar of social rights is applicable to all EU Member States that wish to participate.

In April 2017, the European Commission made a Proposal for an Interinstitutional Proclamation on the European Pillar of Social Rights (COM(2017) 251 final). This outlined three main categories: equal opportunities and access to labour markets; fair working conditions; and social protection and inclusion. Each of these has been developed through a set of 20 proposals that focus on delivering more effective rights for citizens.

The aim of the European pillar of social rights is to serve as a guide towards efficient employment and social outcomes, with a focus on employment and social performance within the context of increasing the resilience of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The European pillar of social rights reaffirms some of the rights already present in the acquis, while adding new principles which address the challenges arising from societal, technological and economic developments; its principles concern all EU citizens and nationals of non-Member countries with legal residence.

Social investment package

Social investment concerns investing in human capital: in other words, policies which are designed to strengthen people’s skills and capacities so they may participate fully in life though developing policy initiatives in areas such as education, childcare, healthcare, training, job-search assistance and rehabilitation. The European Commission’s social investment package (SIP) urges EU Member States to modernise their welfare states, through active inclusion strategies and more efficient and better use of social budgets. It is an integrated policy framework which takes account of the social, economic and budgetary divergences between Member States and focuses on:

ensuring that social protection systems respond to people’s needs to reduce the risk of social breakdown and so avoid higher social spending in the future;
simplified and better targeted social policies, to provide adequate and sustainable social protection systems;
upgrading active inclusion strategies, for example, in the form of affordable quality childcare and education, the prevention of early school-leaving, training and job-search assistance, housing support and accessible healthcare.

The package is designed to address the needs of, among others, children and young people, jobseekers, women, older people, disabled people and homeless people, through promoting initiatives designed to create a larger, healthier and more skilled workforce that should promote higher levels of employment, productivity and social inclusion, thereby creating wider prosperity and a better life for all. These issues were addressed in a European Commission’s Communication Towards Social Investment for Growth and Cohesion – including implementing the European Social Fund 2014-2020 (COM(2013) 83 final) in which the European Commission called on EU Member States to pursue the actions and directions set out in the package for the following three axes:

strengthening social investment as part of the European Semester;
making the best use of EU funds to support social investment;
streamlining governance and reporting.

Social protection

Social protection systems are designed to provide protection against the risks and needs associated with unemployment, parental responsibilities, sickness and healthcare, invalidity, loss of a spouse or parent, old-age, housing, and social exclusion. The main policy framework in the field for social protection is the Europe 2020 strategy and the open method of coordination for social protection and social inclusion, which aims to promote social cohesion and equality through adequate, accessible and financially sustainable social protection systems and social inclusion policies, coordinating policies between the EU Member States in areas such as poverty and social exclusion, healthcare, long-term care or pensions. This is a voluntary process for political cooperation based on agreeing common objectives and measuring progress towards these goals using indicators and benchmarks.

Data sources

There are two main sources of data within Eurostat for the collection of information covering living conditions and social protection. These allow a wide portfolio of social inclusion, employment and social policy indicators to be compiled:

There are a number of additional data sources which may be used to analyse living conditions in the EU, these are broadly spread across other socioeconomic domains, including: population statistics, health statistics, education and training statistics, labour market statistics, house price indices, household budget statistics, or crime and criminal justice statistics (for more on this latter source of information, see the section on ‘Data sources’ in this article).

EU statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC)

The main source for the compilation of EU statistics on income, social inclusion and living conditions is EU statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC). It collects comparable multidimensional microdata on, among others, income, poverty, social exclusion, housing, labour, education and health. The data are generally collected for private households and household members in both monetary and non-monetary terms.

A framework regulation concerning Community statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC) (EC) No 1177/2003 provides the centrepiece around which EU-SILC is constructed, detailing the survey’s design, characteristics, data transmission, publication and decision-making processes; it is supported by a set of implementing regulations and special data collection modules which provide further specifications on issues such as definitions, derogations, fieldwork procedures, sampling rules, quality reports or the collection of secondary variables on a less regular basis.

EU-SILC is composed of a set of core variables that are collected each year. These are supplemented by ad hoc modules developed each year to complement the data collection exercise through supplementary variables which are designed to highlight unexplored aspects of social inclusion.

EU-SILC is the main source for information presented in articles on people at risk of poverty or social exclusion , income poverty statistics and housing statistics.

European system of integrated social protection statistics (ESSPROS)

The European system of integrated social protection statistics (ESSPROS) was developed in response to the need for a specific instrument for statistical observation of social protection schemes among EU Member States. It is a common framework which enables international comparison of the administrative data on social protection, social benefits to households, and their financing. Social benefits are transfers to households, in cash or in kind, intended to relieve them from the financial burden of a number of risks or needs: disability, sickness/healthcare, old-age, survivors, family/children, unemployment, housing and social exclusion.

As with EU-SILC, ESSPROS is composed of a core system and associated modules. The former contains annual data from 1990 onwards covering quantitative and qualitative data for social protection receipts and expenditure by schemes), while the modules contain supplementary statistical information on particular aspects of social protection, for example, pensions’ beneficiaries (launched in 2008) or net social benefits (launched in 2010).

ESSPROS provides a coherent set of data that permits comparisons across the 28 EU Member States, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Serbia and Turkey. The legal basis for the data collection exercise is provided by Regulation (EC) No 458/2007 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the European system of integrated social protection statistics (ESSPROS). It is supplemented by a number of implementing regulations which address other aspects such as the appropriate formats for data transmission, the publication of results, or measures linked to data quality. More detailed information is presented in the ESSPROS manual and user guidelines — 2016 edition.

ESSPROS is the main source for information presented in an article on social protection statistics.