1. IMPROVING THE REGIONAL DIMENSION OF EU-SILC
Luxembourg, 21st October 2014
Regional and Urban Statistics Working Group

2. Regional and Urban Statistics Working Group
Political context
Policy context: Europe 2020 strategy, GDP and Beyond Communication
In this context, growing user demands for regional poverty data
DG Regio wants to use social headline indicators to complement GDP (benchmarking period and as part of convergence criteria )
Luxembourg, 21st October 2014
Regional and Urban Statistics Working Group

3. Regional and Urban Statistics Working Group
Political context
3 social headline indicators (employment rates, percentage of early school leavers and tertiary education attainment) are measured through LFS, 1 (at risk of poverty or social exclusion) through SILC
LFS is regulated to be representative at regional level (NUTS 2), while SILC is not
However, most MS publish regional SILC data (but quality issues exist)
Luxembourg, 21st October 2014
Regional and Urban Statistics Working Group

4. Not concerned (only 1 region)
Current situation
Data available at regional level (number of MS)
The only one MS missing at NUTS 1 (FR) does provide estimates for NUTS 2 level (but only for AROP)
Published
Estimated (only AROP)
Not concerned (only 1 region)
Missing
NUTS 1
13 (PL FROM 2012)
3 (DE , PT 2005, UK ) 11
1 (FR)
NUTS 2 12
4 (DE , FR , NL , PT 2005) 6
6 (BE, EL, HR, HU, PL, UK)
Luxembourg, 21st October 2014
Regional and Urban Statistics Working Group

5. Current situation-quality of regional data
Absolute difference (point estimate - confidence interval bond) (percentage of regions in this sitution, out of the total analysed, 21/20 MS) Percentage of regions where a significant difference from national average can be identified, out of the total number analysed (20/ 19 MS)
Luxembourg, 21st October 2014
Regional and Urban Statistics Working Group

6. Steps taken towards improving the regional dimension of SILC
- March 2013: Directors of Social Statistics agree to send National Action plans for improvement
June 2013: Draft Action plans are provided covering regionalization, timeliness and testing (with funding available from DGs Regio, EMPL and Eurostat)
November 2013: Final Action plans are provided.
March 2014: call for grants is issued. For regionalization, budgeting can cover up to 36 months actions
September 2014: Financing period for the actions proposed in the grants starts
Luxembourg, 21st October 2014
Regional and Urban Statistics Working Group

7. Methodological support contract
F4 contract with GOPA (University of Siena experts)
-Task 1: Analysing current sampling schemes and their adequacy for regional estimates: some countries are ok, some less
-Task 2: Analysing national action plans adequacy to the situation identified: in most cases the proposed actions seem reasonable
-Task 3: Providing general recommendations
Luxembourg, 21st October 2014
Regional and Urban Statistics Working Group

8. Main conclusions from the methodological report
Regions should be treated as design domains
Extreme weights should be trimmed
Re-balancing the sample, taking into account precision requirements at regional level, is desirable, and a concrete methodology is proposed in the report
Eurostat is working on proposing concrete values for the regional precision requirements, taking into account the size of region and the incidence of poverty in it
Regional and Urban Statistics Working Group
Luxembourg, 21st October 2014

9. Regional and Urban Statistics Working Group
Alternatives
Increasing sample size
Improving the sample design
Cummulation (3 years average)
Modelling/estimates or calibration done by NSI's
Luxembourg, 21st October 2014
Regional and Urban Statistics Working Group

10. Main conclusions from the methodological report (ct)
SAE: if a Member State’s NSI does not already have experience in this, it may require 4-5 years to meet the scope. Complexity and lack of comparability can be problems.
Cumulation can be applied as a short term solution (1-2 years) and with good results (60% reduction of the variance).
Country specific recommendations
Luxembourg, 21st October 2014
Regional and Urban Statistics Working Group

11. Regional and Urban Statistics Working Group
Actions proposed in the national action plan for improving regional dimension
-UK moved the sample to another data collection, NUTS 1 is available from 2014 (3 waves cumulation), SAE for NUTS2
-France improved calibration methods (combined with SAE) and can provide NUTS 2 estimates for AROPE and subcomponents, not only AROP; NL plans the same
-AT, ES: 3 years average
-BE, PL, RO, GR: SAE, use of registers to improve NUTS 2 data
-HU plans a new sampling design (but NUTS 2 is quite good)
-HR: better allocation of the sample
-FI: combining a small region (Aland) with Helsinki (NUTS 1.5)
-ES, PL, PT, maybe EL: Increase sample size
Luxembourg, 21st October 2014
Regional and Urban Statistics Working Group

12. Actions financed through grants for improving the regional dimension
BE, DE, EL, HU, NL, PT, RO and UK have applied for objective 1 (Improving the regional dimension)
Small Area Estimates - BE, DE ,EL, PT, RO, UK
Change in sample and/ or its allocation – PT,UK,EL,HU
Increased used of administrative data – BE,HU, RO, NL
AT (applied under obj 3) will work on improvements in the sampling design and weighting, taking into account also regional needs
Luxembourg, 21st October 2014
Regional and Urban Statistics Working Group

13. Regional and Urban Statistics Working Group
Next steps
The starting date of the actions was set to 1 September 2014; however there were several member states that chose to start the action earlier.
The first results are expected by end of January 2015 (first interim report), and the second one in September 2015, for actions that exceed 20 month.
In most cases for the actions listed under objective 1 a 36 months' time frame has been selected (exception: HU 25 months; NL, 22; UK, 25)
DK, ES, IT, FR, PL, SE have not applied for any grant action; BG did not apply for objective 1 or similar
Luxembourg, 21st October 2014
Regional and Urban Statistics Working Group

14. Regional and Urban Statistics Working Group
Contact
Georgiana Aurelia Ivan
European Commission - DG ESTAT Unit F4 "Quality of life" tel. (+352)
Thank you !
Luxembourg, 21st October 2014
Regional and Urban Statistics Working Group