Enquiries, Sources – 20 - Household Budget Survey (HBS)Overview

Short description	Conducting the Household Budget Survey each year allows: regular updates of the basket of commodities listed in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in line with current consumer behaviour in order to adjust market trends accordingly yearly publications on consumer behaviour and the income of private households in Switzerland
Responsible agency	Swiss Federal Statistical Office
Responsible service	Income, Consumption and Living Conditions
Responsible person and information	Dr. Ueli Oetliker, 032 713 69 41, ueli.oetliker@bfs.admin.ch Information on FSO surveys for science and research: Communication Portal for Accessing Social Statistics (COMPASS)
Conducted by	Federal Statistical Office (FSO), field work carried out by LINK Lucerne/Lausanne and DemoSCOPE Adligenswil
Legal basis	Swiss Federal Ordinance of 30 June 1993 on Federal Statistical Surveys (SR 431.012.1)
Type of enquiry	Random survey, spread out across the seven major regions of Switzerland. About 3000 households take part each year. They are chosen at random from the register of private telephone numbers. The Household Budget Survey is conducted by means of telephone interviews and written questionnaires.
Statistical basis and units of enquiry	Permanent resident population in Switzerland. The survey unit is the private household.
Features registered	Details relating to households and income. Standard assessments based on the following variables: socio-economic category of reference person size and type of household major region and linguistic region income bracket age and gender of reference person status of household occupants (tenant, owner)
Degree of regionalisation	Major regions
Date survey conducted	Calendar year
Date of survey	January to December
Periodicity	Annual
Available since	Two major Household Budget Surveys were conducted in 1990 and 1998. Since 2000, the survey is conducted on a continuous basis.
Statistical quality of data	Weighting: Household data is weighted according to the including probability as well as taking into account certain other variables which may lead to a household not taking part in the survey. Finally, a calibration method based on the known distribution of the Swiss population is applied. These three levels of weighting enable us to compensate for a possible bias in the selection of households. The HBS results are therefore based on a household structure which accurately represents the permanent resident population in Switzerland. Response rate: about 30%.
Revision	1990: Consumer expenditure survey (VE) 1998: Income and consumer expenditure survey (EVE) 2000: Annual income and consumer expenditure survey (EVE) 2003: Revision of weighting model 2006: Revision of contents and process optimisation 2008: Change of name to "Household Budget Survey" (HBS)
Last Update	27.05.2011

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