Living Costs and Food Survey and Household Finance Survey

Update and developments

Jo Bulman, LCF Survey ManagerSteven Dunstan, HFS Transformation Lead Social Survey DivisionClaudia Wells, Head of Household Income and Expenditure Analysis Branch

Overview

• Recent developments for LCF

• Family Spending

• Progress against recommendations from the LCF National Statistics Quality Review

• Progress and future plans for ONS’s household finance surveys and statistics

• Discussion

• Feedback on LCF

• User requirements for HFS

Uses of LCF

• Retail Prices Index & Consumer Prices Index• Spending patterns of population• Household expenditure for GDP• Effect of taxes and benefits• Food consumption and nutrition

Annual publication- Family Spending

• 2015/16 Edition• Shorter summary bulletin & data tables

• Efficiency• Timeliness• Clarity of key points

• Content• Economic context• Essential spending• Housing• Non-essential spending• Topical interest

• Imbedded interactive tools

Digital content

Annual publication- Family Spending

• Micro datasets on the UK Data Service- end July• Including a well-being weight

• 2016/17 Edition• 18th January 2018 (provisional)• Child diary analysis• Median expenditure (in addition to mean)• Incorporating UK Time Use Survey

• Feedback welcome• Contents of the 2015/16 bulletin • Proposed contents for 2016/17 bulletin• Plans to use LCF well-being data?

National Statistics Quality Review

• Projects in progress:• Development of weighting methodology

• Review of incentives

• Review of paper diary and length

• Analysis of under-reporting

• Questionnaire development

• Review international use of store scanner data

• Liaison with other National Statistics Institutes

HFS Transformation - aims

• To outline progress to date and future plans for ONS’s household finance surveys and statistics.

• To facilitate further understanding of user requirements for LCF/HFS, including any gaps / weaknesses.

• To help identify areas of common interest regarding the development of household consumption / finance statistics.

Overview

• A summary of the Household Finance Surveys ‘as is’

• Recent developments for LCF / HFS

• Longer term developments

• Discussion

- Feedback on plans

- User requirements

Household Finance SurveysLiving Costs & Food Survey (LCF)

Survey on Living Conditions (SLC)

Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS)

Unit: Survey sample of private households – representative of UK (WAS GB)Mode: Face-to-face Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing

Sample: Stratified 2 stage sampling off PAF: postcode sectors selected as primary sampling unit (PSU) - clusters

Addresses within sectors/clusters selected as secondary unit

Content: Income / tax (employment, property, investments, benefits, pensions)Housing (accommodation, tenure, mortgages, costs (except WAS))

Economic status, occupation, industry, hours workedBasic demographics, education, health

Pension contributionsExclusive:Detailed expenditure

Exclusive:Rotating module;Longitudinal 6 waves (annual)

Exclusive:Detailed wealth & debt, financial planning;Longitudinal (biennial)

Where we want to be

Core

(including labour,income, housing, saving)

Expenditure

Adm

in d

ata

Wealth

Other user needs (e.g.

living conditions)

Dat

a av

aila

ble

long

itudi

nally

• Greater coherence / thematic approach• Joint analysis of income, consumption

and wealth possible• Best use of administrative data• High quality data for analysis of income

distributions (including top and bottom)• Responsive to user requirements• Precise regional estimates• Timely estimates• Make use of new technology and mixed

mode data collection• Reduced costs and respondent burden

Household Finance Surveys – achieved household sample size per annum (approx.)

Living Costs and Food (UK)

Survey on Living Conditions (UK)

Wealth and Assets Survey (GB)

5K HHs~ 4K E&W~ 900 Sc~150 NI

10K HHs GB

12K HHs~ 11K E&W~ 900 Sc~ 300 NI

17K HHs~ 15K E&W~ 2K Sc~ 500 NI

LCF + SLC + WAS? ~ 27KHHs

LCF + SLC ~ 17K HHs

Key current usage

LCF Intra-Governmental Tax and Benefits Model; Effect of Tax and Benefits (ETB); Household Disposable Income and Inequality(HDII); National Accounts Consumption Expenditure; Informs Basket of Goods and (in part) weights for price inflation indices; Nutrition; Fuel Poverty; Comparable statistics with other EU countries

SLC Low income and Social Exclusion – including transitions over time; Comparable statistics with other EU countries

WAS Estimates of wealth and wealth inequality; Exposure to debt; attitudes to saving / debt; monitoring pensions up-take

Progress and short-terms plans

Living Costs and Food Survey

Survey on Living Conditions

Wealth and Assets Survey

Integrated / joint sample Questionnaire harmonisation on

key economic activity, income and living conditions questions

Working towards single outputs from LCF, SLC combined 2017 datasets

Exploring joint sampling with LCF/SLC

Questionnaire change proposals to harmonise with LCF/SLC concepts

Household Finance Survey:

Joint / single outputs for household finance statistics

Large sample for precise UK and Regional statistics

Common methods

Exploring improvements to sampling by using AddressBase, Council Tax data

Exploring improvements to estimation by using combined samples, LFS and admin sources

LCF/SLC combined dataset

CORE – 17K

1. Basic demographics and household structure2. Economic activity status, occupation, industry,

hours worked, number of jobs and type3. Income and tax from: employment (inc company

cars), property, investments4. Income from state pension, benefits and tax

credits5. Pension income and contributions6. Highest level of education achieved7. Tenure, number of rooms, rent, mortgages,

utility bills, insurance8. Health general / limiting illness9. Material deprivation10. Well-being11. Consumption

Expenditure module - 5K

All expenditure (inc. weights and measures for food & drink)

Living conditions module – 12K

1. Trailer module (2017) Wealth, Consumption, Child health

2. Hours of child care3. Current Education

LCF

SLCWave 1-6

SLCWave 1-6

W1 W1 W1 W1 W1

W2 W2 W2 W2 W2

W3 W3 W3 W3

W4 W4 W4

W5 W5

W6

W1

W2

W3W3

W4W4W4

W5W5W5W5

W6W6W6W6

2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 20222017 Data:

• ONS producing the cross-sectional and longitudinal datasets using SLC waves 1-5

• Testing AROPE based on LCF and SLC waves 1-5 precision levels for NUTS2 geographies

2018 Data:• Extending SLC to 6 waves and use of all waves for cross-sectional dataset production

AROPE Non-AROPE EU-SILC

EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions

Household Disposable Income and Inequality (HDII) and Effects of Taxes and Benefits (ETB) - 2017/18

• Household Disposable Income and Inequality- Impact analysis of using combined LCF/SLC- Mean and Median disposable income- Analysis of direct taxes and cash benefits- GINIs for original, gross and disposable income- Lower level geographic breakdowns

• Research outputs- Investigate the production of synthetic

consumption/expenditure data for SLC cases using imputation- Statistical matching of LCF/SLC to WAS using high level

consumption- Feasibility of using this data for analysis of income,

consumption and wealth

Additional releases during 2017/18

• Analysis of expenditure based poverty measures- Release date: Winter 2017- Compare expenditure distributions with income

distribution and growth, characteristics of households towards the bottom of the income distribution but towards the top of the expenditure distribution and analysis of well-being

• Distribution analysis within the National Accounts Framework - Release date: After Blue Book 2017 - Update work previous released by ONS and OCED

Future developments for HFS

Access to administrative / non-survey data:• DWP Benefits• HMRC RTI, SA, Tax Credit data• Regulators (FCA, Pensions)• Local Authority Data (e.g. Council Tax)• Product databases (scanner data)

Mapping administrative data to statistical concepts (e.g. disposable income)

Online capabilityTests planned for the:

ONS Opinions Survey – Nov17 – Apr18

Labour Force Survey:Online take-up test – Jun/Sep 17, Online retention test - Jan 2018Mixed mode test - Sep 2018

Survey on Living Conditions – 2019

Living Costs and Food – ongoing research into a “digital” diary

Wider engagement with research community (inc. USoc)

Discussion

• What are the key areas of interest now and in the future for LCF/HFS (including publication plans)?

• What are the limitations / gaps in data currently available?

• How important is it to know about income, consumption, wealth/debt for the same individuals/ households?

• How important is it to understand transitions at a person/household level – e.g. changes in activity status, income/consumption and over what period?