Archive:EU statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC) methodology - definition of dimensions

This article is part of the Eurostat online publication EU statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC) methodology, which describes the processing methods applied for the computation of EU-SILC datasets published in Eurostat's dissemination database, along with their description as well as methodological restrictions for their proper interpretation.

This article offers description of all the methodological limitations of the dimensions that should be taken into consideration by users of EU-SILC data. The following methodological issues are referring to the datasets on Income and living conditions.

Activity status

code	values
POP	Population
EMP	Employed persons
SAL	Employees
NSAL	Employed persons except employees
NEMP	Not employed persons
UNE	Unemployed persons
RET	Retired persons
INAC_OTH	Other inactive persons

The most frequent activity status is defined as the status that individuals declare themselves to have occupied for more than half the total number of months for which information on any status is available. Consequently, where an individual provides information on his activity status over 12 months, his most frequent activity status will be the status he declares to have occupied for at least 7 months. Individuals who have spent only half or less than the total number of declared months in any activity status are excluded from the computation. People with less than 7 months declared in the calendar of activities are excluded.
The activity statuses cannot be considered as a perfectly hierarchical structure. Due to the construction of the activity statuses, the subset of the total population 'employed persons' will contain more than the sum of 'employees' and 'employed persons except employees'. The same holds for the subset 'not employed persons'. That is, the breakdowns of 'employed persons' and 'not employed persons' are not exhaustive. This is the case because persons who spend less than half of the reported time in two or more breakdowns of 'employed persons' or 'not employed persons' may qualify as being 'employed person' or 'not employed person' but not any of the breakdowns.
The most frequent activity status for each month is based on a self-assessment by the interviewees. Therefore, it may not be entirely consistent with the ILO coding that is applied in the European Union Labour Force Survey.
Activity status is measured at the individual level.

Citizenship

EU28_FOR: EU-28-countries except reporting country
EU27_FOR: EU27-countries except reporting country
NEU28_FOR: Non EU28-countries nor reporting country
NEU27_FOR: Non EU27-countries nor reporting country
FOR: Foreign country
NAT: Reporting country

Citizenship is defined as the particular legal bond between an individual and his/her State, acquired by birth or naturalization, whether by declaration, option, marriage or other means according to the national legislation.
For persons with multiple citizenship and where one of the citizenship is the one of the country of residence, this latter citizenship is recorded/coded.
Citizenship is referred to the current (at the time of survey) national boundaries and not the boundaries at the time of the reference period. In the case of citizenships that no longer exist, the present-day borders of the country are used.
Current EU-SILC question only explores the stock of non-EU nationals, with no information on how long they have been in the country.
The EU-SILC only covers private households, with persons living in collective households and in institutions for asylum seekers and migrant workers excluded from the target population
There is no information on ethnic status of respondents. So ethnic minorities, including the Roma cannot be identified in EU-SILC. In addition, the categorization of the groups into “EU” and “non-EU” is rather broad and the groups distinguished are too large and heterogeneous.

Country of birth

Country of birth is the country where a person was born, namely the country of usual residence of mother at the time of the birth.
Country of birth is referred to the current (at the time of survey) national boundaries and not to the boundaries in place at the time of birth.
In the case of countries that no longer exist (such as parts of the former Soviet Union or others), the present-day borders of the country are used.
For person born in a place that currently belongs to a country different from the country that the place belonged to at the time of birth, the ‘country’ which the place belonged to currently (at the time of the survey) is recorded.
For people born in a place which is now outside the national territory but who feel that they have always been a national citizen, the country of birth should be recorded as according to this citizenship.
Current EU-SILC question only explores the stock of non-EU nationals, with no information on how long they have been in the country.
Unlike citizenship, a person’s country of birth does not change. The distribution by country of birth is therefore influenced not just by recent migration, but by patterns of migration flows that may have taken place many years previously. Thus, the predominant countries of birth of migrants in a country may reflect particular migration flows that took place decades earlier.
Patterns of migration may also reflect past colonial and linguistic links, as seen in the long history of migration from the Indian subcontinent to the United Kingdom, in migration between Ireland and the United Kingdom, between Brazil and Portugal and between Ecuador and Spain and in migration from Suriname to the Netherlands.
Migrants — and more particularly recently arrived migrants — are likely to be under- covered by EU-SILC. Some migrants will have been missed from the sampling frame (which is designed to ensure a representative coverage of the overall population, rather than specifically migrants). These coverage problems may be hard to assess and correct because of a lack of reliable information on the numbers of migrants inspecific areas
In Member States in which the number of migrants is very small EU-SILC, given its nature as sample survey, is not capable of fully capturing the characteristics of the people concerned.
There is no information on ethnic status of respondents. In addition, the categorization of the groups into “EU” and “non-EU” is rather broad and the groups distinguished are too large and heterogeneous.

Degree of urbanisation

There is no single, universally preferred definition of rural areas, nor is there a single rural definition that can serve all policy purposes. EU-SILC survey uses a definition based on human density.
Following the human density criterion is possible urban areas to be characterised as rural, especially in the case of densely populated areas that are part of regions dominated by mountains with small unincorporated communities.
Narrowly defined definitions can direct attention to specific populations; they also have the potential consequence of eliminating from policy eligibility places that should be covered.
The proposed 3-category breakdown, focusing on population density rather than on land use, has been retained by the Task Force because it is an acceptable compromise from a user point of view, because it doesn’t necessitate additional burden on respondents or statistical offices and because this classification is currently already in use in several harmonised social surveys.

Educational level

ISCED refers to the International Standard Classification of Education, developed by UNESCO. The version of the classification that is applied for this indicator follows the 1997 version of ISCED.
In face of the diversity of national education systems (with regard to curricula, compulsory schooling ages, equivalences between qualifications-and other elements) one should be careful in making cross-country comparisons.

Highest educational level of parents

Highest educational level of children’s parents refers to children living in a household with one or both parents and to the highest level of education attained by (at least one of) the parents. Data are classified according to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED): low education corresponds to ISCED levels 0-2 (pre-primary, primary and lower secondary education); medium education corresponds to ISCED levels 3 and 4 (upper secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary education) and high education corresponds to ISCED levels 5 and 6 (tertiary education).
In face of the diversity of national education systems (with regard to curricula, compulsory schooling ages, equivalences between qualifications and other elements) one should be careful in making cross-country comparisons.
Persons who have never been in education (and/or illiterate) are excluded from the calculation of the indicator.

Household type

The classification of households is not mutually exclusive. A single man aged 66, for example, is included in both the category “one adult, older than 65 years” and in the category “single person”.
The aim of the core variable on household composition is to collect information about the size and composition of the private household to which the respondent belongs and on the relationships between household members. The social situation of an individual is at least in part a reflection of their household arrangements.
The place of usual residence is used as the basis of the household membership. The existence of shared expenses in the household (including benefiting from expenses as well as contributing to expenses) is used to determine who is regarded as household member.

NUTS region

One should be careful in making cross-country comparisons, because the number of regions per countries varies a great deal.
One issue in developing regional indicators concerns the choice of the type of units to serve as ‘regions’. For a number of substantive and practical reasons, geographical-administrative regions, specifically NUTS regions at various level of classification, appear as the most appropriate choice for EU countries.
NUTS units are not defined in exactly the same way in different countries and can differ greatly in size and homogeneity
From an analytical point of view, 2-digit level of NUTS is recommended. Note that for 1 in 3 EU countries the 2 digit level corresponds to the country level.

Tenure status

The accommodation tenure status is assigned to each household member.

Data sources and availability

Context

Further Eurostat information

Data visualisation

Regional Statistics Illustrated - select statistical domain 'xxx' (= Agriculture, Economy, Education, Health, Information society, Labour market, Population, Science and technology, Tourism or Transport) (top right)

Publications

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Publications in Statistics Explained (either online publications or Statistics in focus) should be in 'See also' above

Main tables

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Title(s) of third level folder (if any)

Database

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Other information

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External links

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Notes

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