Information on data
The European system of integrated social protection statistics, abbreviated as ESSPROS, is a common framework that enables international comparison of the administrative national data on social protection. It provides a coherent comparison between European countries’ social benefits to households and their financing.
The ESSPROS data collection consists of a core system and specific modules.
Core system
The core system provides annual data starting from the year 1990, on:
- quantitative data on social protection receipts and expenditures by schemes
- qualitative data, meaning metadata by scheme and detailed benefit
Social benefits are transfers to households, in cash or in kind, with the intention to relieve them of the financial burden of a number of risks or needs. These risks or needs of social protection are reflected by the comprehensive ESSPROS functions.
The functions are:
- sickness / health care
- disability
- old age
- survivors
- family / children
- unemployment
- housing
- social exclusion.
Education is not included unless it is a support for indigent families with children.
Social benefits are made through collectively organised schemes by the government or collective agreements. These do not necessarily refer to institutions, although in many cases they do.
The schemes can be defined solely for the purpose of ESSPROS statistics and are based on a classification which groups them by criteria. In other words, the schemes are defined in ESSPROS as a statistical unit so that expenditure and receipts can be associated to the same scheme.
Schemes that are only based on individual arrangements or where simultaneous reciprocal agreements exist are not regarded as social protection.
The ESSPROS early estimates are preliminary data, subject to revision when the core system data become available.
Early estimates for year T (reference year) are released in the dataset on 'Expenditure on social benefits by function' (spr_exp_func) by the end of October of year T+1. Thus, they are available 1 year before the corresponding core system data. This significantly improves the timeliness and provides fresher, though less detailed, data on social protection expenditure. Countries provide early estimates for the main indicators on a voluntary basis.
Early estimates are a small subset of the annual data of the core system, the so-called main indicators, namely social protection benefits broken down into 8 functions:
- sickness / health care
- disability
- old age
- survivors
- unemployment
- family / children
- housing
- social exclusion not elsewhere classified
These data are consistent with the complete ESSPROS core system data. Further information on the methodology applied by countries is available in a dedicated folder in CIRCABC (in PDF format).
For each country, quantitative data for each social protection scheme together with the list of national schemes are also available.
The data by scheme, in combination with the qualitative information, can be used by users to get deeper and more concrete insights about the coverage of results at the national level as published on Eurostat’s database online.
The qualitative information provide a complete set of metadata for each national scheme. These include:
- name of the scheme
- reference national legislation
- name of the organisations responsible for running the scheme
- benefits provided, etc.
Additionally, information on reforms in the area of social protection, such as the introduction of a new scheme, or the transformation of some rules of an existing scheme, among others, can be put in relation to their impact on the results published at the national level.
Modules: Pension beneficiaries and net social protection benefits
The modules provide supplementary statistical information on particular aspects of social protection relating to pension beneficiaries and net social benefits.
The annual data collection for the module on pension beneficiaries was launched in 2010 for the reference year 2008.
The aim of the module on pension beneficiaries is to provide the total number of beneficiaries for:
- each of the 7 categories of pensions
- each of the 4 functions grouping these categories (disability, old-age, survivors, and unemployment)
- the ‘old-age and survivors’ function
- the aggregation of the 4 functions at the ‘total’ level
The net social protection benefits module shows the real impact of social transfers on the income of beneficiaries. This is done by measuring expenditure on social protection benefits less taxes and social contributions paid on these benefits.
This module estimates the amount that is actually disbursed in a country for social protection benefits. This leads to a more reliable cross-country comparability of expenditure on social protection.
The module, which follows the so-called ‘restricted’ approach, does not include benefits provided in the form of tax breaks (fiscal benefits). The only exception are payable tax credits, meaning credits that can exceed the tax liability, which are included as cash benefits in the core system data.
The annual collection of data on net social benefits became compulsory in 2012, when data for the reference year 2010 were provided.
Unemployment benefits recipients
The annual data collection on unemployment benefits recipients (UBR) was launched in 2020, aiming at introducing a dedicated module in ESSPROS to extend the coverage of data on social benefits recipients which, till then, only covered pension beneficiaries.
The goal is to collect data about people receiving periodic cash benefits recorded under the unemployment function. Using periodic cash benefits has 2 advantages:
- it allows to skip the methodological difficulties related to collecting data on recipients of lump sum or in kind benefits
- it covers the vast majority of expenditure for social benefits recorded under the unemployment function, as it accounts for about three quarters of the overall EU27 expenditure for unemployment benefits
Data are collected at scheme level, broken down by means-testing, age group, and sex, and are available as of reference year 2018.
The number of recipients is provided for the following benefits:
- full unemployment
- partial unemployment
- early retirement benefit for labour market reasons
- vocational training allowance
- other cash periodic benefits under the unemployment function
The number of recipients is published using 2 measures:
- Recipients over the year (ROY): this shows the number of different recipients that received the type of benefit during the reference year. Each recipient is counted only once, irrespective of the number of times they received a benefit during that year and the duration for which they receive it.
- Annual average stock (AAS): this shows the average of multiple observations of the number of recipient units in receipt of the observed type of benefit at given points during the reference year. AAS describes the average number of recipient units during the reference year and provides a measure of the equivalent number of people receiving the benefit for a full year (even when the benefit is paid for shorter periods). The frequency of the observations used to derive the average can differ, but the vast majority of respondent countries use monthly data.
The data is currently collected a voluntary basis, meaning there is no legal obligation for EU countries to collect and transmit the data to Eurostat.
So far, 15 countries submitted UBR data:
- 13 EU countries (Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, Ireland, France, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Austria, Poland, Slovakia); they account for about half of the EU27 expenditure on periodic cash benefits recorded under the unemployment function.
- Switzerland and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Concepts and definitions
The social protection scheme is the ESSPROS statistical unit, and it is defined in the ESSPROS manual and user guidelines (Part 1, § 42):
‘A social protection scheme is a distinct body of rules, supported by 1 or more institutional units, governing the provision of social protection benefits and their financing.
This definition calls for further clarification:
(i) Social protection schemes should at all times meet the condition that it must be possible to draw up a separate account of receipts and expenditures.
(ii) Preferably, social protection schemes are chosen in such a way that they provide protection against a single risk or need and cover a single specific group of beneficiaries.’
The receipts of social protection schemes are classified by type and origin.
The type provides information on the nature of or the reason for a payment, namely social contributions, general government contributions, transfers from other schemes, and other receipts.
The origin specifies the institutional sector from which the payment is received, namely resident institutional units (corporations, general government, households and non-profit institutions serving households) or the ‘rest of the world’.
Social protection expenditure is classified by type, which shows the nature of, or the reason for, the expenditure. These are social protection benefits, administration costs, transfers to other schemes, and other expenditure.
Social protection benefits are transfers to households, in cash or in kind, intended to relieve them from the financial burden of a number of risks or needs.
The risks or needs of social protection included in ESSPROS are:
- disability
- sickness / health care
- old age
- survivors
- family / children
- unemployment
- housing
- social exclusion not elsewhere classified
Policy context
ESSPROS was jointly developed by Eurostat and EU members to meet the need for a specific instrument for the statistical observation of social protection across the EU.
The European Commission supports and adds to the EU members' policies for social inclusion and social protection.