Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS)

About the survey

The HFCS collects household-level data on households’ finances and consumption. The fieldwork took place for most countries in 2010 and 2011 for the first (2010) wave, between 2013 and the first half of 2015 for the second (2014) wave and in 2017 for the third (2017) wave. Anonymised microdata from the first, second and third waves were made available to researchers in April 2013, December 2016 and March 2020 respectively.

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

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

Common set of output variables

The participating institutions report a set of commonly agreed output variables for their respective country. ”Core output variables” are to be delivered for all participating countries. A set of “non-core variables” has also been defined, with the participating institutions being free to decide which of these non-core variables they collect and report. The collection of standardised variables will ensure 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 the respondent who 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 house/flat and the interviewees' behaviour during the interview. These provided "paradata", which were particularly useful when editing and imputing data after the fieldwork was completed.

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.

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