Average annual net income of households

Household

Set of people habitually living in the same dwelling. There are two types of households: one-person households, made up of one person, and multi-person households, made up of two or more people.

Consumer unit

A different accountable concept of members of a household which is obtained by applying adjustment factors to expenditure, which enables us to weight different levels of need between families of different sizes and composition.

The Survey on Living Conditions is an annual survey conducted by the INE since 2004 with a two-fold purpose:

• to provide information on personal income distribution through net annual income.
• to measure the incidence and composition of poverty by setting up an at-risk-of-poverty threshold.

The data for Catalonia comes from the Survey on Living Conditions. This is an annual statistical operation of INE, which Idescat uses to make a specific application of the results for Catalonia.

From 2016, as the result of an agreement signed with the INE to improve this statistic, Idescat carries out its own field work to extend the Survey with information from more than 1,700 households; this means that the sample now includes more than 3,000 households and 7,300 individuals. Furthermore, it allows the dissemination of results for Catalonia, the territorial areas, Barcelona city and Barcelona Metropolitan Area. The main objective of this extension is to improve the statistical validity of the results.

In order to measure the risk of poverty of the population, a specific at-risk-of-poverty threshold is presented for Catalonia. The population is classified according to this threshold, and the incidence, composition and intensity of poverty are studied with regard to this classification.

As of 2021, the at-risk-of-poverty or social exclusion rate (AROPE Rate - EU 2030 Target) rate was subject to a methodological change that affects two of its three components, namely low work intensity and severe material and social deprivation, while the poverty rate is the only component that has not been modified.

The survey gathers annual information on the household and provides information on the physical and social environment, the condition and type of home, the tenancy system and monthly expenditures.

From 2013 onwards, a change was introduced in methodology which consists of using administrative sources to ascertain the personal income variable. Due to this change there will be a break in the series, since the income data from the 2013 survey is not comparable to data published in previous years. For this reason, retrospective estimates have been made for the main indicators since 2009 that are comparable with the 2013 data.

You can get more information about these statistics in the methodology.