Water expenses by households living in Flanders: Data availability in the Belgian EU-SILC

Few data sources in developed countries contain for a representative sample of households information on water expenses alongside a rich set of reliable information on individual and household characteristics. In this Data in Brief we describe the Belgian EU-SILC data, which we used for ‘Measuring water affordability in developing economies. The added value of a needs-based approach’ (Vanhille et al., 2018) [1]. EU-SILC can be obtained from the Belgian National Statistical Institute and is the most important representative household survey on income and living conditions in the European Union, and contains, among others, an advanced measurement of household income. It is not well-known, though, that national datasets often contain more information, making them suitable for studies that are somewhat outside the ‘core scope’ of EU-SILC. One example is studying the consumption of water by households, as can be done for Belgium. In this article we briefly introduce the Belgian EU-SILC and present the data on water expenses for households living in Flanders. In 2015, 50 per cent less than 23 EUR on water, while 90 per cent spent less than 45 EUR on water.