This report presents the results of the 2018 Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS), which was carried out between April 2018 and January 2019. It is the second report in the series, with the first undertaken in 2013. Detailed information on household assets and liabilities is collected by the HFCS, as well as data on gross income and credit constraints.

The HFCS is collected under the auspices of the European Central Bank (ECB) Household Finance and Consumption Network (HFCN) which designed the survey for use in the Eurozone. Further information on the survey and network can be found at:

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/home/html/researcher_hfcn.en.html.

Regarding the data in this report, the following in particular should be noted:

• The data was only collected from private households. The results therefore exclude assets and liabilities held by the public sector as well as those directly held by publicly traded companies. Assets and liabilities held abroad by Irish households are included while those held in Ireland by non-domestic households are excluded.

• The data collected was on the basis of self-assessment by the reporting households and was supplemented with other available sources. For example, the data used to derive income from state transfers was taken directly from available administrative records. 

• There may be underreporting of the value of some real or financial asset, deliberate or otherwise. Households found it particularly difficult to provide the value of certain assets such as self-employment business wealth. Therefore, the value of such assets is subject to high degrees of estimation.

• A key challenge in all countries that conduct the HFCS is that wealth distribution is highly skewed. A small proportion of households have substantial asset holdings and these households may be insufficiently represented in the survey, either because they are not easily accessible or because they refuse to participate. For this reason, this report focuses mostly on indicators (such as medians) that are not affected by an insufficient coverage of the wealthiest households.