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Recruiting H2R Populations for EU-SILC – The German Experience

*Luca Rebeggiani, Statistisches Bundesamt (Federal Statistical Office) 

Keywords: EU-SILC, Immigrant population, Recruitment methods

EU-SILC is one of the most important household surveys in Europe with an outstanding political relevance. However, it still has to deal with quality issues. One of the major concerns is how to reach target groups less willing to participate in voluntary surveys. This is also the case in Germany, where the underrepresentation of immigrants and less educated people in EU-SILC has been remarked in the past.

This paper presents detailed results about the extent of underrepresentation of immigrants and less educated people in the German EU-SILC sample. To identify the deeper roots of the problem, we analyze the evolution of the DSP (Dauerstichprobe befragungsbereiter Haushalte), the access panel from which EU-SILC is sampled. We also present group-specific inequality measures calculated on EU-SILC basis.

Preliminary results suggest that underrepresentation of hard-to-reach populations has gradually decreased. Moreover, most of the inequality measures based on EU-SILC are now consistent with the results of other samples. For further improvements, we discuss recently implemented measures like modifications of the sampling method as well as some practical data collection issues.