PSHB

Abstract

In 1989 the Services of Programmation of Scientific Policy (now Services Fédéraux des Affaires Scientifiques, Techniques et Culturelles) commissioned the services of Family Sociology of the University of Liège and the University of Antwerp to launch a large survey, the Panel Study on Belgian Households (PSBH). Every year, the same set of questions is submitted to the same sample of individuals and households in Brussels, Wallonia and Flanders. The questionnaire elaborated by the two universities tackles different areas, such as the family structure and relationships, housing, health, children, geographical mobility, living conditions, values, opinions… The first objective of the Panel was to offer some information on the nature, frequency and sequencing of the changes that modify the ways of living, but also to evaluate their influence on the moral and material well-being of the Belgian population. A second objective was developed after some time. From 1994 to 2001, the Panel Survey on Belgian Households (PSBH) is, together with the CSB, the Belgian component of the European Household Panel Survey (ECHP), a standardised survey conducted in Member States of the European Union under auspices of the Statistical Office of the European Communities (Eurostat). The survey involves annual interviewing of a representative panel of households and individuals in each country, covering a wide range of topics on living conditions. It was launched in response to the increasing demand in the EU for comparable information across the Member States on income, work and employment, poverty and social exclusion, housing, health and many other diverse social indicators concerning living conditions of private households and persons.