Developing the questionnaire for the Eurosystem Survey on Household Finance and Consumption

This paper describes the development process of a questionnaire intended for the euro area Household Finances and Consumption Survey (HFCS) currently being prepared by the Eurosystem (national central banks in the euro area and the European Central Bank (ECB)) and some National Statistical Institutes. The survey will cover information on manifold households ’ decisions with regard to holding real and financial assets, taking debt, risk attitudes, employment, income, pensions, intergenerational transfers, gifts, consumption and savings, thus expected to result in a powerful research tool. The process of preparing the survey and the questionnaire in particular was marked by several challenges posed by the multidisciplinary nature of the HFCS as well as by the cross-national nature of the initiative. These challenges and the development of the harmonised HFCS questionnaire are illustrated in this paper