The Household Budget Survey (HBS) is a sample survey of private households periodically carried out by the national statistics institutes of the EU-27 Member States, Norway, Switzerland, Croatia, Turkey and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. This survey was launched in most EU Member States in the early 1960s, and Eurostat has been collating and publishing HBS results every five years since 1988 (the latest collection wave - 2005).
The HBS essentially provides detailed information on household expenditure on goods and services but also on income, possession of consumer durables, information on housing and many demographic and socio-economic parameters. Household Budget Surveys are voluntary and are not governed by EU regulation. Although there have been continuous efforts towards harmonisation, differences remain, in particular between successive survey rounds due to methodological changes. As detailed breakdowns cannot be compared over time, each wave should be considered separately.
HBS collects data by COICOP classification adapted to HBS needs (COICOP-HBS). Alongside the three main categories of household expenditure, namely on housing, food and transport, cultural spending comes under the heading of leisure and cultural expenditure. Cultural expenditure reflects not only discrepancies in cultural practices but also relative price differences. The effect of price differences can be limited by expressing mean household cultural expenditure in terms of ‘purchasing power standard’ (PPS).
The data presented in the second edition of the ‘Cultural statistics’ pocketbook (Eurostat 2011) are based on the EU Household Budget Surveys, wave 2005.
Harmonised Indices of Consumer Prices (HICPs) are economic indicators constructed to measure price evolutions of consumer goods and services acquired by households. HICPs provide comparable measures of inflation in the euro area, the EU, the European Economic Area and other countries, including acceding and candidate countries. They are calculated according to a harmonised approach and a single set of definitions.
The indices are constructed using the COICOP classification of goods and products adapted to HICP needs (COICOP-HICP), with 2005 as the base year. The available 4-digit-level of disaggregation of goods and products by COICOP allows the presentation of annual indices for the following cultural items: books, newspapers and periodicals, cultural services, equipment for the reception, recording and reproduction of picture and sound and recording media.
