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Income and living conditions (ilc)

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National Reference Metadata in Single Integrated Metadata Structure (SIMS)

Compiling agency: Institut National des Statistiques et des Etudes Economiques (INSEE)

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The European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) is a survey-based instrument aiming at collecting timely and comparable cross-sectional and longitudinal multidimensional microdata on income, poverty, social exclusion and living conditions. In addition, it collects module variables every three years, six years or ad-hoc new policy needs modules.

The EU-SILC instrument provides two types of data:

  1. Cross-sectional data pertaining to a given time or a certain time period with variables on income, poverty, social exclusion and other living conditions;
  2. Longitudinal data pertaining to individual-level changes over time, observed periodically over four‐or more year rotation scheme (Annex III (2) of 2019/1700).

Social exclusion and housing condition information is collected mainly at household level while labour, education and health information is obtained for persons aged 16 and over. The core of the instrument is income information at very detailed component level and mainly collected at personal level.

26 May 2025

Statistical concepts and definitions for EU-SILC are specified in Regulation (EU) 2019/1700, Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/2181, and Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/2242. Additional information is available in the EU statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC) methodology and in the methodological guidelines and description of EU-SILC target variables (see CIRCABC).

Further details are provided in items 5, 15.1.1.1, 15.2.2 and 18.3.

Statistical units are private households and all persons living in these households who have usual residence in the Member State. Annex II of the Commission implementing regulation (EU) 2019/2242 defines specific statistical units per variable and specifies the, content of the quality reports on the organization of a sample survey in the income and living conditions domain pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 of the European Parliament and of the Council.

The target population is private households and all persons composing these households having their usual residence in the Member State. Private household means a person living alone or a group of persons who live together, providing oneself or themselves with the essentials of living.

France (excluding Mayotte).

Four overseas departments (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyane, la Réunion) have been included with effect from the 2022 survey.

Description of reference period used for incomes

Period for taxes on income and social insurance contributions

Income reference periods used

Reference period for taxes on wealth

Lag between the income ref period and current variables

 The taxes paid in 2023 on income received during the course of that year are collected at the household level. The social security levies relate to income received in 2023.

 The survey was conducted between February and April 2024. The reference year for income is 2023. The income received during 2023 is collected at the individual and household level.

 We take account of the amount of property wealth tax paid in 2023. This relates to property held as at 1 January 2023.

 Some variables, such as variables relating to the cost of housing, relate to the collection period, i.e. the months of February to April 2024, which differs from the reference period for income relating to 2023 (declared income).

According to Reg. (EU) 2019/1700 Annex II, precision requirements for all data sets are expressed in standard errors and are defined as continuous functions of the actual estimates and of the size of the statistical population in a country or in a NUTS 2 region. For the income and living conditions domain, the estimated standard errors of the following indicators are examined according to certain parameters set:

  • · Ratio at‐risk‐of‐poverty or social exclusion to population;
  • · Ratio of at‐persistent‐risk‐of‐poverty over four years to population;
  • · Ratio at‐risk‐of‐poverty or social exclusion to population in each NUTS 2 region.

Further information is provided in section 13.2 Sampling error.

The data involves several units of measure depending upon the variables. Income variables are transmitted to Eurostat in national currency. For more information, see methodological guidelines and description of EU-SILC target variables available on CIRCABC

In 2020, the FR-SILC survey was redesigned in order to comply with the IESS regulation.

The whole statistical processing and editing chain has been rewritten (from SAS to R).

The French data are taken from the statistics on income and living conditions (SILC): the majority of the data are taken from the SILC survey. The amounts for income and social security benefits are then obtained by matching with administrative data (taken from tax and social security sources).

Annual

For more information, please see 14.1.1 and 14.1.2

The sample size of the FR-SILC survey, around 25,000 respondents in metropolitan France, and the number of NUTS-2 regions, 26 (22 regions in metropolitan France and 4 overseas departments), 13 of which have fewer than 800 respondents, make it impossible to calculate reliable poverty indicators keeping only observations for each region. This is why INSEE has developed a small area estimation method, which will provide micro-data (weights) for each region, allowing the calculation of poverty rates (and AROPE) at regional level. With this method, all the observations in the database are used for each region. So, to calculate the regional indicators, it is important not to filter only on the observations from one region. 

From FR-SILC 2022 onwards, the variables RB051_XXXX (with XXXX the NUTS2 or NUTS1 region identifier) contain regional weights calculated using a small area estimation method.

 

See Annex 8 - Break in series.