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Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS)

The Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) collects detailed micro-data on the distribution of households’ asset portfolios and financial liabilities and their consumption decisions in all euro area countries. It is the most comprehensive survey on this topic in Europe.

The HFCS is the first survey in Slovakia that allows the analysis of the entire household balance sheet in line with international standards. It also collects related economic and demographic data (e.g. household income, intergenerational transfers, selected categories of consumption and credit constraints, age, education and employment status of respondents) that shed light on other aspects of households’ financial decisions.

The HFCS project was set up by the European Central Bank in close cooperation with other euro area central banks. The survey has been conducted in euro area countries and some other European Union countries (Czech Republic, Hungary) at roughly three-yearly intervals since 2010, using a harmonised methodology.

In Slovakia, the HFCS has been conducted in five waves, in 2010, 2014, 2017, 2021 and 2023. It is administered by the National Bank of Slovakia and the fieldwork is carried out by the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic. The sixth wave of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) is taking place in Slovakia between October 2026 and April 2027.

Data collection is currently underway as part of the sixth wave of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) in Slovakia.

  • Selection of Households

    Households are selected at random for the survey, ensuring that every household has an equal chance of participating. The primary sampling unit is the dwelling, and the selection encompasses all regions of Slovakia, ensuring coverage of the entire country. Furthermore, the sample of dwellings is determined through a two-stage random selection process using statistical methods; this ensures that the results are representative not only of Slovakia as a whole but also of the individual regions.

    The survey focuses on households, which are defined as individuals who habitually reside in a randomly selected dwelling and share a common household budget. Although only a subset of households participates, the selection method is designed to ensure that the resulting data accurately reflects the financial situation and consumption behavior of all households in Slovakia.

  • Contacting Households

    Households that are randomly sampled for HFCS will receive an invitation letter requesting their participation. The letter contains all the necessary information about the survey, as well as contact information for the interviewer and the relevant regional workplace of the Slovak Statistical Office, where respondents can verify the authenticity of the survey and obtain additional information if necessary. You can contact the HFCS team at NBS via e-mail hfcs@nbs.sk.

  • How Can I Verify If the Survey Is Serious?
    • If your household has been selected for the survey, you will receive an invitation letter signed by the Executive Director of the National Bank of Slovakia (NBS) and the Director General of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic.
    • To verify that your household is included in the list of those selected for the survey, please call the telephone number of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic provided in the invitation letter.
    • The HFCS team at the NBS can be contacted by email at hfcs@nbs.sk.
    • More information on the NBS can be found at www.nbs.sk, and information on the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic at www.statistics.sk.
    • You can also find more detailed information about the survey on the website of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic: https://zber.statistics.sk/sk/financie-a-spotreba-dom%C3%A1cnost%C3%AD
  • Data Privacy and Data Security

    We ensure that household responses are processed anonymously. The data will be treated as sensitive data (in accordance with Act No. 18/2018 Coll. on the Protection of Personal Data, as well as the European General Data Protection Regulation – GDPR) and will be used exclusively for statistical and research purposes.

  • Information Leaflet
  • Contact
    Piktogram obálky

    hfcs@nbs.sk

Reports and statistics

  • Content of the Questionnaire

    The questionnaire consists of two main parts:

    1. Questions on the household as a whole: real assets and their financing, other liabilities, credit constraints, private business, financial assets, intergenerational transfers and gifts, consumption and savings.
    2. Questions on individual household members: demographics (for all household members), employment, future pension entitlements and income (for household members aged 16 and over).

    The data collected in each participating country are the so-called core variables. The set of non-core variables includes data for which countries are free to decide which of them to collect.

    The Slovak questionnaire contains some additional questions that are not included in the common questionnaire template. These are, for example, questions on financial literacy or on a specific module on a selected topic (e.g. the impact of Covid, intergenerational mobility). For further details, please contact hfcs@nbs.sk.

  • Information on the Methodology

    Working with the HFCS database is quite complex and requires adequate knowledge of data processing, statistics and econometrics, as well as survey methodology. A detailed description of the questionnaire and important aspects of the survey, such as the sampling design, weighting, data editing and techniques used for multiple imputation of missing responses, variance estimation using replication-based methods, data comparability issues, definitions and other details, can be found in the ECB‘s HFCS methodological report for the 2023 wave.

Selected Outputs Related to Slovakia

Due to upcoming changes to the rules for providing data to external users, HFCS data is temporarily unavailable.