Poverty and Social Inclusion Indicators

National Statistical Institute

Statistics on Living Conditions Department,

Demographic and Social Statistics Directorate

Desislava Dimitrova, PhD

head of department

2 P.Volov street, 1038 Sofia

[email protected]

+359 2 9857 183

Survey on income and living conditions (SILC) is a tool for providing timely and comparable data on income distribution, level and structure of poverty and social exclusion. The survey is carried out in a European methodology and provides information about the current state (cross-sectional data) and longitudinal (longitudinal data) changes in income level and structure of poverty and social exclusion.

• Basic data;
• Child care;

• Basic data;
• Housing;
• Material deprivation;
• Income at household level;

• Basic data;
• Education;
• Health status;
• Economic activity;
• Individual income.

• International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED'2011);
• International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08);
• Classification of Economic Activities (NACE Rev.2-2008) 

The following social fields are included in the survey methodology:

• Basic demographic and other characteristics of the household and its members;
• Monetary indicators of living standards and social stratification of the population: data on incomes from different sources;
• Non-monetary indicators of living standard: basic data on housing conditions; problems related to housing or neighborhood (location); access to education; health status and access to healthcare;
• Economic activity, employment and unemployment of persons aged 16 and more;
• Social services and programs and the participation of the household or its members in them.

Total household income:

Two main concepts for total household income are applied:

• Total household gross income (HY010);
• Total disposable household income (HY020).

Total household gross income (HY010) is computed as the sum for all household members of gross personal income components:

• Gross employee cash or near cash income (PY010G);
• Gross non-cash employee income - company car (PY021G);

• Gross cash benefits or losses from self-employment (including royalties) (PY050G);
• Pensions received from individual private plans (PY080G); 
• Unemployment benefits (PY090G), old-age benefits (PY100G), survivor' benefits (PY110G), sickness benefits (PY120G), disability benefits (PY130G) and education-related allowances (PY140G) plus gross income components at household level:
• Income from rental of a property or land (HY040G);
• Family/children related allowances (HY050G), housing allowances (HY070G), social exclusion not elsewhere classified (HY060G);
• Regular inter-household cash transfers received (HY080G);
• Interests, dividends, profit from capital investments in unincorporated business (HY090G);
• Income received by people aged under 16 (HY110G).

Total disposable household income (HY020) can be computed as total household gross income (HY010) is reduced to:

• Regular taxes on wealth (HY120G);
• Regular inter-household cash transfer paid (HY130G);
• Tax on income and social insurance contributions (HY140G).

Household definition:

Household is two or more persons, living in one dwelling or part of dwelling, sharing common budget and eating together.

Household is a person, living in one dwelling, room or part of it to a dwelling, has a separate budget for the cost of meals and expenses to satisfy other needs.

Equivalence scale:

For the calculation of indicators of poverty and social inclusion using the total disposable household income is "equalised". Due to the different composition and number of persons in the household equivalent scales apply. Use the modified OECD scale, which gives a weight of 1.0 to the first person aged 14 or more, a weight of 0.5 to other persons aged 14 or more and a weight of 0.3 to persons aged 0-13. The weights are given to each member of the household and summed to obtain an equivalent household size. Total disposable net income for each household is divided by its equivalent size and form the total disposable net income per equivalent unit.

Units of observation are households and household members.

The EU-SILC target population consists of all private households and their current members residing in the country. Persons living in collective households and in institutions are generally excluded from the target population.

Entire territory of Republic of Bulgaria

2006 - 2020

Not applicable.

BGN, euro, percent (%), number of persons

EU-SILC uses the following reference periods for the different variables included in the survey:

• Constant;
• Current;
• Income reference period

The income reference period is the previous calendar year;

• Working life: period of time between the time that person started his/her labor activity and now;
• The reference period for the questions concerning “childcare for children up to 12 years old” is a typical (normal) week between January and June of the survey year. “The typical week” should be understood as one which is representative of the period as a whole;
• Other periods of time associated with the data for the current economic activity, employment and unemployment for persons aged 16 and more:
• reference week – refers to the period “from Monday to Sunday” of the week before the interview date.
• previous 4 weeks – refers to the previous 4 weeks ending with the reference week.
• last 12 months.

· Regulation (EC) No 1177/2003 concerning Community statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC);

· Regulation (EC) No 1553/2005 amending Regulation (EC) No 1177/2003;

· Regulation (EC) No 1980/2003 implementing Regulation (EC) No 1177/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning Community statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC) as regards definitions and updated definitions;

· Regulation (EC) No 1981/2003 implementing Regulation (EC) No 1177/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning Community statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC) as regards the fieldwork aspects and the imputation procedures;

· Regulation (EC) No 1982/2003 of 21 October 2003 implementing Regulation (EC) No 1177/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning Community statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC) as regards the sampling and tracing rules;

· Regulation (EC) No 1983/2003 of 7 November 2003 implementing Regulation (EC) No 1177/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning Community statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC) as regards the list of target primary variables;

- Regulation (EC) No 2256/2015 of the Commission of 4 Dec 2015 amending Regulation (EC) No 1983/2003 implementing Regulation (EC) No 1177/2003 of the European Parliament and the Council concerning Community statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC) as regards the list of target primary variables;

· Regulation (EC) No 28/2004 of 5 January 2004 implementing Regulation (EC) No 1177/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning Community statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC) as regards the detailed content of intermediate and final quality reports.

Not applicable.

• Law on Statistics;
• Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics (recital 24 and Article 20(4)) of 11 March 2009 (OJ L 87, p. 164), stipulates the need to establish common principles and guidelines ensuring the confidentiality of data used for the production of European statistics and the access to those confidential data with due account for technical developments and the requirements of users in a democratic society.

According Art. 25 of the Statistics Act individual data are not published (they are suppressed). Dissemination of individual data is possible only according to Art. 26 of the Statistics Act.

Statistical information is published according to the Release Calendar presenting the results of the statistical surveys carried out by the National Statistical Institute.

The Calendar is available on the NSI's website: https://www.nsi.bg/en/node/480

The data for Income and living conditions (EU-SILC) are published on NSI website, section Social Inclusion and Living Conditions in accordance with the Law on Statistics (Chapter 5) and the European Statistics Code of Practice, respecting professional independence and in an objective, professional and transparent manner in which all users are treated equitably.

Annual

Poverty and Social Inclusion Indicators.

Not applicable.

Detailed results are available to all users of the NSI website under the heading Social Inclusion and Living Conditions - Poverty and Social Inclusion Indicators: https://www.nsi.bg/en/node/8292 and INFOSTAT

Anonymised individual data can be made available for scientific research purposes, and at the individual request of the Rules for the provision of anonymised individual data for scientific and research purposes.

Information service on request, according to the Rules for the dissemination of statistical products and services to NSI.

• Regulations of the European Parliament and of the Council;
• Methodological Guidelines and Description of EU-SILC target variables - Doc065;
• Survey methodology: https://www.nsi.bg/sites/default/files/files/metadata/SILC_Methodology_EN.pdf
• Indicators - Methodological notes: https://www.nsi.bg/sites/default/files/files/metadata/SILC_description_indicators_EN_2020.pdf

National Quality Report according to Regulation (EC)  28/2004.

The Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) is an annual survey implemented in the framework of Regulation (EC) No 1177/2003, which defines Scope, Definitions, Time coverage, Characteristics of the data, Sample size, Publication and Access to data.

Data are accompanied with quality reports analysing the accuracy, coherence and comparability of the data.

BG-SILC the main users are:

• Institutional users like other Commission services, other European institutions (such as the ECB), national administrations (mainly those in charge of the monitoring of social protection and social inclusion, or other international organisations;
• Eurostat, ministries and government agencies;
• Research organizations and institutes;
• End users - including the media - interested in living conditions and social cohesion in the EU.

Not applicable.

SILC covers only people living in private households (all persons aged 16 and over within the household are eligible for the operation), i.e. persons living in collective households and in institutions are generally excluded from the target population.

As with any other statistical survey, SILC may be burdened with errors due to sampling and other relating to the inability to be interviewed some of the units in the sample, as well as the errors taking place at the stage of data recording, data processing, etc.

Regulation 1177/2003 defines the minimum effective sample sizes to be achieved to compensate for all kinds of non-response. The allocation of the effective sample size is done according to the size of the country and ensuring minimum precision criteria for the key indicator at national level (absolute precision of the at-risk-of-poverty rate of 1%).

Computations of standard errors were carried out using SAS programs for the SILC Quality Reports and Complex Sample analysis in SPSS ver.20.

 Non-sampling errors are basically of 4 types:

• Coverage errors: errors due to divergences existing between the target population and the sampling frame.
• Measurement errors: errors that occur at the time of data collection. There are a number of sources for these errors such as the survey instrument, the information system, the interviewer and the mode of collection
• Processing errors: errors in post-data-collection processes such as data entry, keying, editing and weighting
• Non-response errors: errors due to an unsuccessful attempt to obtain the desired information from an eligible unit. Two main types of non-response errors are considered:

1. Unit non-response: refers to absence of information of the whole units (households and/or persons) selected into the sample
2. Item non-response: refers to the situation where a sample unit has been successfully enumerated, but not all required information has been obtained

SILC cross-sectional and longitudinal data are available in the form of tables 12 months after the end of the data collection period.

Not applicable.

According to the Regulation (EC) No 1177/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning EU-SILC: "Comparability of data between Member States shall be a fundamental objective and shall be pursued through the development of methodological studies from the outset of EU-SILC data collection, carried out in close collaboration between the Member States and Eurostat".

Although the best way for keeping the comparability of data is to apply the same methods and definitions of variables, small departures of the definitions given by Eurostat are allowed in EU-SILC. In this way, the mentioned Regulation in its article 16th says: "Small departures from common definitions, such as those relating to private household definition and income reference period, shall be allowed, provided they affect comparability only marginally. The impact of comparability shall be reported in the quality reports."

The coherence of two or more statistical outputs refers to the degree to which the statistical processes, by which they were generated, used the same concepts and harmonised methods. A comparison with external sources for all income target variables and the number of persons who receive income from each ‘income component’ will be provided, where the Member States concerned consider such external data to be sufficiently reliable.

Comparability across EU Member States is considered high due to use of harmonised concepts, variables, definitions and classifications.

Not applicable.

The cross-sectional data for the EU-SILC2020 were compared to the Labor force survey 2020 and HBS 2020.

When comparing SILC and HBS we must take into account the discrepancies. The differences are to great extent brought about by the methodological diversity. Here are the main methodological differences:

•  Different reference periods for income variables – in HBS the main variables of income is estimated quarterly and yearly and presented in the form of average values. In EU-SILC the reference period is the previous calendar year;
• Different types of income are taken into account i.e. in HBS the information is collected both about the income in cash and in kind, while in EU-SILC – only about the income in cash (with a few exceptions), which may be important for the income from farming and social benefits other than retirement pay and pension;
• Different way of data collection – in HBS the respondents make records in the so called diary. They have to determine the data sources themselves and do not have them listed in the diary. In EU-SILC each respondent is asked detailed questions. In EU-SILC all the income missing data are imputed, while there is no imputation in HBS;
• HBS data are not weighted. 

The total length of interviewing household in average  65 minutes.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

The sample for EU-SILC 2020 are selected from the sampling frame based on the Population Census 2011. The data base includes all private households and their current members residing in the country. Persons living in collective households and in institutions are excluded from the target population. Student’s and worker’s hostels are excluded at the first stage of selection of PSU, because student’s and worker’s households rarely stay on the same addresses and are difficult to trace.

The frame is regularly updated according to the administrative changes made.

Household data within the selected PSUs are updated according to the Information System “Demography” data (ISD). 

The longitudinal component consists of the sub-samples R1, R2, R3, R5 and R6.

All personal/household income variables were collected by interview.

In some cases, where the information on income component is unavailable a register to obtain missing value information is used. The National Social Security Institute keeps a register of all persons for whom employers pay social insurance contributions and of all self-insured persons. This register contains some data on personal income but it is generated by a labour activity of the persons and moreover, this is only the income on which the person was insured. From Social Assistance Agency obtained on income from social benefits

Sampling unit

Yearly

SILC2018 data are collected with questionnaires (CAPI and PAPI) through personal interview with household, including in the sample and all household members aged 16 and more.

The mean interview duration

The mean interview duration per household is calculated as the sum of the duration of all household interviews plus the sum of the duration of all personal interviews, divided by the number of household questionnaires completed. Only households accepted for the database have to be considered.

The average household interview duration was about 23 minutes, while the average individual interview duration was about 21 minutes.

Average interview duration = 66

In the process Data-entry is a logical control of extreme values, filled-in information on all issues, data comparability checks, links between individual questionnaires and registers is carried out.  After processing the primary data and receiving the target changes, a verification with the SAS program provided by Eurostat for verification and validation of the data is performed. Additional compatibility checks are performed before publishing the information

• Household cross-sectional weight (target variable DB090) to obtain the actual number of private households in the country; 
• Personal cross-sectional weight (target variable RB050) to obtain the actual number of persons in the country;
• Personal cross-sectional weight for each household member aged 16 and more (target variable PB040) to obtain the number of persons aged 16 and more in the country;

Design factor

Not aplicable