The EU-SILC (Statistics on Income and Living Conditions) is an instrument aiming at collecting timely and comparable cross-sectional and longitudinal multidimensional micro-data on income, poverty, social exclusion and living conditions. This instrument is anchored in the European Statistical System (ESS). It replaced the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) from 2005 onwards.
The EU-SILC was launched in 2004 in 13 Member States (Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Austria, Portugal, Finland and Sweden) and in Norway and Iceland. This first release of cross-sectional data mainly refers to the income reference year 2003 with a fieldwork carried out in 2004. The EU-SILC will reach its full scale extension to include 25 Member States plus Norway and Iceland in 2005. Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Switzerland have launched SILC in 2006.
| The instrument aims to provide two types of data:
- Cross-sectional data pertaining to a given time or a certain time period with variables on income, poverty, social exclusion and other living conditions (including three health items).
- Longitudinal data pertaining to individual-level changes over time, observed periodically over, typically, a four year period.
Social exclusion and housing condition information is collected at household level while labour, education and health information is obtained for persons aged 16 and over. The core of the instrument, income at very detailed component level, is mainly collected at personal level.
Also see:
Eurostat Metadata EU-SILC: Summary Methodology
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The ECHP was carried out during the period 1994-2001 (Eurostat). The ECHP is a longitudinal, multi-subject survey covering many aspects of daily life, particularly employment and income, but also demographic characteristics, environment, education and health. The ECHP is a unique source of information due to its three main characteristics. These are (1) its multidimensional coverage of a range of topics simultaneously, (2) a standardised methodology and procedures yielding comparable information across countries and (3) a longitudinal or panel design. This longitudinal design makes it possible to follow up and interview the same private households and persons over several consecutive years. In all, the sample covers some 60 000 households comprising 130 000 adults aged 16 or over at 31 December of the previous year. The first wave took place in 1994, when the EU had only 12 Member States, so Austria, Finland and Sweden were not included.
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