Description The Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) is an instrument that aims to collect timely and comparable cross-sectional and longitudinal multidimensional microdata on income distribution, poverty and social exclusion. It also covers various related EU living conditions and poverty policies, such as child poverty, access to healthcare and other services, housing, over-indebtedness and quality of life. It is also the main source of data for microsimulation purposes and flash estimates of income distribution and poverty rates.
Method SILC is a sample survey and the data are collected by computer assisted personal and telephone interviews (CAPI and CATI). Administrative sources are also used: pensions (of all types) provided by the Social Insurance Services and the Public Sector, the Public Benefit Allowance and other social and disability benefits, the income of the employees in the Public Sector.
A rotational design of 4 replications with a rotation of one replication per year is used. Every year, the sub-sample that completed four years in the survey is substituted by a new. This design is appropriate to serve the cross-sectional and longitudinal aspects of the survey.
The sample design used is one-stage stratification. The households were stratified in 9 strata based on District (Urban / Rural). From each stratum the sample was selected with simple random sampling. The total sample size (all 4 sub-samples) is around 5.000 households.
Data Coverage The SILC covers the household population of Cyprus.
The statistical unit of the survey is the household and its members.
Frequency The SILC is conducted annually.
Data Availability The results of the SILC are announcenced with Press Releases. Data for the SILC are available on CYSTATs web Portal, in the form of predefined tables. A report (publication) is available for years 2005-2008, 2008-2011, 2010-2013, 2011-2014 και 2012-2015.
Data are also available on EUROSTAT's website.
Comparability Over Time The data are comparable over time.
Principal Variables Household level:
Dwelling type, tenure status, housing costs and conditions, arrears, capacity to afford basic needs, material deprivation, housing and family/children related allowances, social exclusion benefits (GMI), regular inter-household cash transfers, income from rental of a property or land.
Personal level (16+):
Demographics, health, education, material deprivation, employment, income from work, interests, dividends, profit from capital investments in unincorporated business, pensions received from individual private plans, unemployment benefits, old-age benefits, survivor' benefits, sickness benefits, disability benefits, and education-related allowances.
Ad-hoc modules - different subject every year.
Classification Systems a) Economic activity: Industrial classification of economic activities within the European Communities (NACE Rev. 2) at the 2 digit level.
b) Occupation: International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08) at the 2 digit level.
c) Educational Level: International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED 2011)
d) Country of Birth: Eurostat Standard Code list (SCL) GEO
e) Country of Citizenship: Eurostat Standard Code list (SCL) GEO
Legal Framework Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/2242 specifying the technical items of data sets, establishing the technical formats and specifying the detailed arrangements and content of the quality reports on the organisation of a sample survey in the income and living conditions domain pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing a common framework for European statistics relating to persons and households, based on data at individual level collected from samples.