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The Eurosystem Household Finance and Consumption Survey
Report

The Eurosystem Household Finance and Consumption Survey

Results from the First Wave

European Central Bank
ECB, 2013
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

The Eurosystem Household Finance and Consumption Network – an arm of the European Central Bank (ECB) – marshaled institutional and individual forces to conduct a survey of household finances across 15 euro-zone countries. Face-to-face interviews focused on assets, debt, net wealth, income and credit, and consumption limitations. The editors present their data on tables by group and by countries, with additional written analyses. The ECB provides no author credit; readers can thank more than 100 anonymous researchers and writers for these transparent, informative graphs and charts, and for the accurate, easy prose that leads you on a clear path through a jungle of intimidating statistics, percentiles and numerics. This survey raises the bar in both significance and quality, and can serve as a model for others attempting similar research. getAbstract recommends the analysis of this exhaustive survey to government officials worldwide – and especially in Europe – as well as to financial planners, bankers, credit brokers, and anyone seeking to understand current and likely future financial conditions throughout Europe.

Summary

An Ambitious Survey

The Eurosystem Household Finance and Consumption Network gathered financial data from households across 15 euro-zone countries. The survey included 22 banks, three statistical institutes, five related agencies and 105 active participants, plus the cooperation of the members of 62,000 households. The Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) represents the first-ever effort to amass consistent financial data across these countries: Belgium, Germany, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia and Finland.

The survey was carried out between 2008 and 2011. The reference year was 2010. State of-the-art surveying methods allowed studied oversampling and appropriate imputation – that is, the designation of a value to an otherwise faulty observation.

The survey confronted many challenges: people’s reluctance to talk about their financial situation, the impossibility of conducting the interviews uniformly across countries, and time and cultural anomalies. Analysts reduced distortions by comparing findings with existing databases. These data reflect the best current judgments...

About the Author

The authors are more than 100 individuals participating under the direction of the Eurosystem Household Finance and Consumption Network.

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