# **ANNEX 1: DATA SOURCES**

# **EU-SILC data**

48. The EU-SILC is an instrument aiming at collecting timely and comparable micro data on income poverty and social exclusion in countries of the European Union. This instrument is anchored in the European Statistical System, and aims to provide two types of data: (i) cross-sectional data pertaining to a given time or a certain time period with variables on income, poverty, social exclusion and other living conditions, and (ii) longitudinal data pertaining to individual-level changes over time, observed periodically typically over a four years period. The reference population of EU-SILC is all private households and their current members residing in the territory of the member states at the time of data collection. Persons living in collective households and in institutions are generally excluded from the target population, but in general the excluded population in each country is no more than 2 percent of the total national population. All 25 EU member states<sup>25</sup> , along with Norway and Iceland, were covered in the 2005 and 2006 rounds.

49. Four main types of data are gathered in EU-SILC: (i) variables measured at the household level; (ii) information on household size and composition and basic characteristics of household members; (iii) income and other more complex variables termed ‘basic variables’ (education, basic labor information and second job) measured at the personal level, but aggregated to construct householdlevel variables; and (iv) variables collected and analyzed at the person-level ‘the detailed variables’ (health, access to health care, detailed labor information, activity history and calendar of activities’). This paper utilizes data from the 2005 and 2006 EU-SILC cross-sectional rounds, but not from the longitudinal component (which is not yet available in the public domain). The main EU-SILC variables used in our analysis are equivalized disposable income as well as data on taxes and benefits (see Box 1). Further details pertaining to the specific variables included in the micro data sets, as well as the specific sample selection procedures followed in each country covered in the survey, can be found in the EU-SILC user database descriptions for the respective years.<sup>1</sup>

# **EBRD-World Bank Life in Transition Survey**

50. This paper also uses data for the EU8 countries from the 2006 Life in Transition Survey (LiTS), carried out between August and October 2006. This survey provides a snapshot of welfare of people in the ECA region. In each country, the questionnaire was administered to a nationally representative sample of 1,000 households using face-to-face interviews.<sup>26</sup> 51. The survey’s main objective was to assess the impact of transition on people, and the questionnaire covered four main themes. First, it collected personal information on aspects of material well-being, including household expenditures, possession of various consumer durable goods. Second, the survey included measures of satisfaction and attitudes towards economic and political reforms and public service delivery. Third, the LiTS captured individual “histories” through

> 25 Bulgaria and Romania were not then EU members. Data for Germany was not included in the databases we obtained from Eurostat. In addition, Cyprus, Norway, and Iceland have been excluded from the tables and figures in this paper.

> 26 Please see EBRD, _Life in Transition, a Survey of People’s Experience and Attitudes_ May 2007, for a more detailed description of the survey as well as a summary of some of its main findings. The countries covered in the survey are Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Mongolia (not in ECA, but included because its an EBRD client country), Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.

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