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Description
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The Italian Household Budget Survey (HBS) focuses on consumption expenditure behaviors of the households residing in Italy and analyzes them according to household main social, economic and geographical characteristics. It also represents the informative base for i) the quarterly estimate of household final consumption expenditure, ii) the annual weighting of the basket to calculate the consumer price indexes, iii) the official estimates of relative and absolute poverty, ii) the measure of inflation by household expenditure classes.
The main focus of the HBS is represented by all expenditures incurred by resident households to purchase goods and services exclusively devoted to household consumption or gifts for people out of the household. Also included in this definition are: goods from the household garden or farm directly consumed by the household or given away as gifts (self-consumption); goods and services provided by the employer to employees as wages or for services; estimated rents of owner-occupied or enjoyed free housing (imputed rents). Any other expenditure with purposes other than consumption is excluded from data collection (e.g., purchase of dwellings or land, payments of taxes, professional expenditures).
In addition to socio-demographic characteristics of all household members and housing information, the survey collects expenditures on: food and non-alcoholic beverages; alcoholic beverages and tobacco; clothing and footwear; housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels, including major renovations; furnishings, household equipment and routine household maintenance; health; transport; information and communication; recreation, sport and culture; education services; restaurants and accommodation services; insurance and financial services; personal care, social protection and miscellaneous goods and services.
The total amount of expenditure at the time of purchase of the good or service is reported, regardless of the time of actual consumption or use and the method of payment.
The survey unit is the de facto household, defined as a group of persons cohabiting, bound by marriage or kinship, affinity, adoption, guardianship, or affection, and who share household expenditure and/or share household income.
The survey, conducted with two different data collection techniques, includes three phases:
a) the initial interview, conducted by the interviewer in CAPI (Computer Assisted Personal Interview) mode, which records the characteristics of the household members, those of the dwelling in which they live, and some recurrent expenditures for the dwelling;
b) the self-filling, left up to the household, of a paper diary on which they record their expenditures on food and consumer goods and services for 14 days;
c) the final interview, conducted by the interviewer in CAPI mode, which records all other household expenditures.
Beginning with the 2022 edition, the Italian HBS has implemented changes resulting from Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 of the European Parliament and of the Council, effective January 1, 2021 and setting 2026 as the first regulated edition for the consumption domain. By that date, the Regulation requires the survey to adopt the latest version of COICOP (Classification of Individual Consumption by Purpose), namely COICOP 2018, when collecting and disseminating data.
The data collection instruments of the Italian HBS were reformulated according to COICOP 2018 as early as the 2022 edition. From 2014 to 2021, the survey had instead adopted ECOICOP, the European version of COICOP 1999. Compared with the latter, the 2018 COICOP is more detailed, reflects changes in goods and services in some areas, and improves linkages with other classifications. In COICOP 2018, there are 13 expenditure divisions.
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