Household budget surveys in the EU - Methodology and recommendations for harmonisation 2003 - Products Manuals and Guidelines

Household Budget Surveys (HBS) are among the most comprehensive household surveys, conducted in all Member States of the Union. Since 1989, Eurostat has launched three rounds of data collection from the Members States and other countries. Despite the common focus of the surveys on the study of patterns of consumption of private households in different population groups, the national HBS represent a diversity of structures and designs, as well as differences in the topics covered. The present methodology strives to capture and describe the diversity between Member States from a comparative perspective, taking national surveys conducted around the reference year of 1999 as a basis. It represents one of the continuing efforts of Eurostat to harmonise the surveys and make their results more widely accessible.