Household Budget Survey

Until 1 January 2021, the IT HBS run under the Gentlemen's agreement reached by the Statistical Programme Committee (SPC, comprising the Director Generals of EU national statistical services and EUROSTAT) during its meeting of 1989.

https://www.istat.it/it/archivio/71980

Consumption Expenditure approaches applied

Net current monthly household income

Imputed rent for main dwelling;
Imputed rent for garage(s) (main dwelling);
Imputed rent for basement(s) or attic(s) (main dwelling).

Household consumption expenditure includes the monetary value of self-consumptions, in-kind benefits, imputed rentals (for owner-occupied and rent-free dwellings) and presents (purchased). Expenditures for any other purpose than private consumption are excluded (payments of fees, investments, repayment of loans, business expenditures, …).
Imputed rents are calculated through self-assessment method and are collected both for main and secondary dwellings. 

As for the Italian HBS, the basic unit of data collection is the de facto household, which consists of people:
- living together in the same dwelling
- having legal relationship (by blood, marriage, adoption or guardianship) or affective ties
- sharing incomes and expenditures 

As for the Italian HBS:

- friends co-residing "as relatives", having strong affective ties, are considered household members (Usually resident, not related to other members);
- people co-residing for economic reasons (Resident boarder, tenant; Live-in domestic servant, au pair) are not considered household members and only some personal information are collected about them.

In 2020, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Italy experimented a national lockdown during the months of March, April and May.
For this reason:
- in April, the HBS was temporarily stopped and data for this month estimated on the basis of the interviews conducted in March and May;
- in March, April, May and June, CAPI methodology was replaced by CATI methodology, to protect interviewers and households from Covid-19.
From July to December 2020, both CAPI and CAPI methodology were used, having households the possibility to choose between the two.

• Coherence control with previous HBS data
• Coherence control with data from other sources (National Accounts, Prices)

External data sources used for calibration are:

• at Nuts level 1: resident population by geographical area, sex and age-class; foreign resident population by geographical area and sex; resident population and households by geographical area and type of municipality; resident population 15+ by geographical area and professional condition
• at Nuts level 2: resident population and households by region

For this purpose, the Italian National Institute of Statistics has defined a quality policy, providing itself with appropriate tools as well as management changes to carry it out.

Istat quality policy aims at the improvement of statistical outputs and processes through the development of appropriate methodologies and tools as well as an appropriate scientific and technical support, provided to the staff directly involved in the production and dissemination of statistical information.

Istat quality policy is coherent with the European framework developed by Eurostat, taking up its main principles and definitions, stated in the European Statistics Code of Practice, and useful to ensure and strengthen the accountability and governance of the European Statistical System and of the National Statistical Systems.

For details: https://www.istat.it/en/organisation-and-activity/institutional-activities/quality-commitment 

The Italian HBS represents the informative base for:

• quarterly estimates of household final consumption expenditure
• official estimates of relative and absolute poverty
• annual weighting of the Consumer Price Index basket
• measure of inflation by household expenditure classes

More in general, HBS data are used, at the institutional level, to study, evaluate and promote measures to improve household economic conditions and to overcome economic household disadvantages and disparities.

International bodies and organizations collect HBS data essentially to offer time comparisons between household living conditions in different countries or geographical areas and to focus user attention on specific expenditure categories of particular relevance (e.g. household expenditures on energy).

Unit response rate

Item response rate

• Availability of a database on interviewers
• Training course for interviewers
• Supervision of interviewers by assessing completeness and accuracy of filled-in questionnaires 
• Monitoring response rates per interviewer during data collection
• Establishing an Help Desk for support to interviewers during field operations
• Interviewer-questionnaire matching by identification codes
• Interviewers filling-in questionnaires on performed interviews
• Telephone re-interviews to verify that interviews were performed
• Ex post evaluation of interviewers performance based on indicators
• Debriefing with interviewers on data collection problems

- ‘voluntary’, because respondents refuse to answer the questionnaire due to hostility, lack of interest, lack of availability, suspicion,…;

During data collection, each base non-responding household is replaced with a substitutive household having similar socio-demographic characteristics, in order to maintain the sample representativeness, and to minimize the impact of unit non-response as well. No more than five substitutions are admitted for every non-responding household. 

Other quality actions undertaken to control unit non-response are:

• Survey presentation letter signed by the President of Istat
• Telephone contacts to make an appointment with the interviewer
• Interviewer identification badge
• Delivery of a brochure containing statistical information on the survey
• Description of survey objectives provided by the interviewer
• Special care in writing clear instructions to fill-in diaries
• Establishing a toll free line or telephone number for further explanations
• Guarantees on statistical confidentiality 

• Quantitative control on received questionnaires
• Collecting identification codes of non-responding households
• Collecting non-response reasons during data collection
• Collecting interviewer identification codes for non-responding households
• Control on interview outcome codes (completed, refused, non-contacted, duplicated, etc.)
• Ad hoc analysis to evaluate effects of unit non response

Time lag for the first published results, in terms of months

Target date when data should have been delivered (scheduled date of dissemination of national results)

3. Additional comments regarding cross-domain coherence

Several national legal acts guarantee the confidentiality of data requested for statistical purposes. In Italy, according to art. 9, paragraph 1 of the Legislative Decree n. 322 of 1989 (concerning the statistical system), statistical data cannot be disseminated but in aggregated form, in order to make it impossible to identify the person to whom the information relates. The data collected can only be used for statistical purposes.

Official statistics must also safeguard the rights, basic freedoms, and dignity of respondents, in particular with regard to the right of confidentiality and personal identity.

Istat assures the protection of personal data according to the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, repealing Directive 95/46/EC) and, as national legislation, Italian Data Protection Code (Legislative Decree no. 196/2003) and Code of conduct and professional practice applying to the processing of personal data for statistical and scientific research purposes within the framework of the national statistical system.

In order to make statistical secrecy and protection of personal data effective, Istat is currently taking appropriate organizational, logistical, methodological and statistical measures in accordance with internationally established standards.

Moreover, Legislative Decree n. 322 of 1989, art. 6 and 6 bis provides that the exchange of microdata and personal data within the National Statistical System (Sistan) is possible if it is necessary to fulfil requirements provided by the National Statistical Programme.

Finally, in implementation of art. 5-ter of the legislative decree 14 March 2013, no. 33, the new "Guidelines for the access for scientific purposes to the elementary data of the National Statistical System" establish the conditions under which the bodies and offices of the National Statistical System can allow researchers to access their own elementary data for scientific purposes.