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Income and living conditions (ilc)

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National Reference Metadata in Single Integrated Metadata Structure (SIMS)

Compiling agency: Hungarian Central Statistical Office

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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.

10 October 2025

Statistical concepts and definitions for EU-SILC are specified in EU Regulation (EU) 2019/1700, EU Regulation 2019/2181, and EU Regulation 2019/2242. Additional information about microdata access is available in Statistics on Income and Living Conditions - Access to microdata - Eurostat 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 Hungary. Annex II of the EU regulation 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 EU regulation 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 Hungary. A private household means a person living alone or a group of persons who live together, providing oneself or themselves with the essentials of living.

Reference area is the territory of Hungary.

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

 T-1

 T-1

 T-1

The fieldwork was between February 1 and April 15, 2024. The lag between the income reference period and current variables is min 2 to 4 months.

According to the regulation:

  • Survey year indicated with T
  • Income reference period is the previous calendar year: T-1

There was not any changes compared to the corresponding regulation.

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.

Regarding income items we do use imputation. Completing the income variables during data collection is a condition for accepting the questionnaire. For the imputation procedure, the Hungarian Central Statistical Office utilizes administrative data obtained from the National Tax and Customs Administration and the Hungarian State Treasury.

The imputed rent is calculated by the Housing Statistics Section. 

The genaral approach we use for imputed rent determination:

Hungary has got a special housing market situation in the aspect of imputed rental calculation. The share of market rental sector is cca. 5-8 %. Owner occupiers constitute 95-92 % of the total housing market.  Personal attitudes and social circumstances make stronger the role of private property in the housing market. Geographical and physical attributes and foundemantally  the location of the dwelling within the country determines mostly the value of a dwelling, and possibility to let it on the rental market. Comparison of standard of living on the basis of EU-SILC survey between different social groups is not affected by the minor groups of market renters. The calculation of imputed rent is reasoned by international comparison of data within EU.

The imputed rent was calculated based on stratification method. The dwellings in HU-SILC were startified into 30 clusters according to geographical location of the dwelling since it is the key factor which determines the market rent. Then the avarage rents per 1 square meter corresponding to each geographical unit coming from Dwelling statistics were applied. The imputed rent was calculated as average rent per square meter in the given geo strata multiplied by actual square meter of the dwelling.   We consider this approach as the best available to estimate imputed rent for the time being in the context of small rental market.

HU-SILC is direct data collection. All the information are derived from the data collected from the respondent during the field work. 

Annual

Timeliness of information reflects the length of time between its availability and the event or phenomenon it describes.

This section refers to the timing of dataset sending to Eurostat and first publication of results from the data collection.

HU-SILC 2024 dataset was set sent to Eurostat in 20 December 2024. At the time of compliling the report, the database has already been validated.

The first results of the data collection were published in 22 October 2024 in a form of a comprehensive study and diagram set. At the same time the data on the STADAT database was also avalable in the section Living conditions.  All data are considered as preliminary untill we receive the validation certificate from Eurostat.

The result are comparable in NUTS2 level. The key indicators are avalable by NUTS regions on our website in a time series from 2014 (see 5.1.2. chapters on the link). The key indicators are calculated according to the new AROPE concept.

Due to the revision in 2025, there was a break in the series starting from the 2019 recording.

See Annex 8.