Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS)

About the survey

The HFCS collects household-level data on household finances and consumption. For most countries the fieldwork was carried out in 2010 and 2011 for the first wave (2010), between 2013 and the first half of 2015 for the second wave (2014) and in 2017 for the third wave (2017). While the fourth wave (2021) was initially planned for 2020, the fieldwork was disrupted by the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. It was ultimately carried out between the first half of 2020 and the first half of 2022.

As a consequence, countries conducted the survey during different phases of the pandemic, which needs to be taken into account when comparing results across countries and waves. The pandemic also affected other aspects of the methodology, which are further described in the FAQ, the report on the results and the methodological report.

Anonymised microdata are made available to researchers.

HFCS dashboard (Oesterreichische Nationalbank)

Please add the following information to your access request:

• a copy of your government-issued photo identification document (saved as: ID_surname.pdf)
• a Resume or Curriculum Vitae in English (in PDF or simple text formats saved as: CV_surname.pdf)
• completed access request form

Participating institutions produce harmonised output (i.e. survey data) for their respective countries, but do not necessarily use identical questionnaires. However, a common template serves as a benchmark for the country questionnaires, as well as for establishing the desired output.

Common set of output variables

Participating institutions report a set of commonly agreed output variables for their respective countries. Core output variables have to be delivered for all participating countries. A set of non-core variables has also been defined, with participating institutions free to decide which of these they collect and report. Collection of standardised variables ensures cross-country comparability.

The HFCS questionnaire consists of two main parts:

1. Questions relating to the household as a whole, including questions on real assets and their financing, other liabilities/credit constraints, private businesses, financial assets, intergenerational transfers and gifts, and consumption and saving;
2. Questions relating to individual household members, covering demographics (for all household members), employment, future pension entitlements and income (for household members aged 16 and over).

In addition, there are standardised questions to determine which respondent should answer the questions on the household as a whole (the “financially knowledgeable person”), as well as questions to be answered by the interviewer relating to the appearance and location of the dwelling and the interviewees’ behaviour during the interview. These provided “paradata”, which were particularly useful when editing and imputing data after completion of the fieldwork.

Overall aim of the data

Survey data are key to:

• understanding both individual behaviour and developments in aggregate variables
• evaluating the impact of shocks, policies and institutional changes, both for households and for different institutional structures
• better understanding the implications of shocks for macroeconomic variables
• building and calibrating realistic economic models incorporating heterogeneous agents
• gaining important insights into issues such as monetary policy transmission and financial stability.

Importance of household sub-populations

Gathering information on the behaviour of sub-populations of households is essential. For instance, the financial crisis has demonstrated that a relatively small percentage of households – those who are highly indebted – can have a major impact on market outcomes. Another example of an influential sub-group is the top wealthiest households. Though small in number, these have a highly disproportionate effect on aggregate statistics.

The following questions in the field of household finance may be of particular interest to researchers and policymakers.

HFCS supporting microsimulation modelling via EUROMOD

The European Central Bank and the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission have signed an agreement to link HFCS data to EUROMOD, the EU tax-benefit microsimulation model maintained by the JRC. EUROMOD is the JRC’s flagship model for calculating the effects of taxes and social benefits on households and work incentives for each EU country and the EU as a whole. In recent years the JRC has, in close collaboration with the ECB, been using the HFCS to develop a new extension of EUROMOD. This extension allows economists to generate household-level data on net income after taxes and social benefits using the HFCS survey, and will help us better understand how monetary policy affects household incomes and work incentives.

Documents and links

Users of the HFCS data are invited to provide feedback about the survey and the survey data to hfcs@ecb.europa.eu. This feedback may include, for example:

• Views on the usefulness of the contents and the user-friendliness of the structure of the micro data
• Comments and suggestions on the documentation of the HFCS
• Suggestions on how to improve the contents of the survey
• Specific questions on the data, such as clarification needs for individual observations or variables
• Information about possible inconsistencies or pitfalls detected in the micro data