Published: 30.01.2025.

European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), based on a common and verified methodology, has been collected in all EU countries for more than 20 years. It allows to reflect EU-level and national trends and compare various social and economic aspects affecting well-being of households and individuals.

Latvian EU-SILC survey every year covers about eight thousand households, i.e., one in a hundred. It is an opportunity to share opinions about general and financial well-being as well as living conditions, which contributes to the production of objective survey results and depiction of the actual situation.

Survey results will be extensively used by national and local authorities when making decisions that affect everyday life of the inhabitants, e.g., size of income, pensions and benefits, access to health care, etc. Therefore, responsiveness and cooperation are significant to get accurate and fair insight into the life of the population.

Read more about the EU-SILC on the Eurostat website.

Respondents in the addresses selected with a random sampling method receive a Central Statistical Bureau (CSB) letter or e-mail letter inviting them to take part in the survey. All members of the sampled households will be asked to answer general questions characterising population of Latvia, while people aged 16 and over additionally will be asked about education, employment, health status, access to health care, income, benefits, etc. The questions included in the survey also cover the overall situation in the household – housing conditions, ability to make ends meet, availability of and satisfaction with public green spaces, as well as environmental behaviour.

Web interviewing

The e-survey will be available from 31 January to 21 February 2025 in the CSB Electronic Data Collection (EDC) system e.csp.gov.lv. Please note that it should be filled in by the addressee of the invitational letter.

Only the addressees of the invitational letter are authorised by the EDC system and can log in with Internet bank, Smart-ID, e-identification card, or e-signature. If the questionnaire is filled in by another person, he/she shall take a full responsibility for the veracity of the information provided.

Please refer to the Guidelines for help with filling in the e-survey questionnaire (available in Latvian only).

Personal and telephone interviewing

If due to some reason respondent is not able to complete e-survey during the web-interviewing period mentioned, he/she will be contacted by a CSB interviewer from 31 January to 30 June 2025 to arrange a telephone or face-to-face interview.

Upon arrival, the interviewer will present a CSB employee identification card with a photo. If you want to verify identity of your interviewer or find out any other information about the survey:

The applicable laws and regulations of the European Union and of the Republic of Latvia allow the CSB to collect and process personal data and mandate it to ensure the protection and confidentiality of the data received. The information acquired will only be published as a summarised data and used to analyse economic and social phenomena and processes.

Responsibility of the respondents, in accordance with Section 14 of the Statistics Law, is to support the production of official statistics by providing truthful information and participating in the survey.

To give stronger support for elderly

EU-SILC shows that more than 40 % of all seniors and 70 % of the seniors living alone are at risk of poverty.

The policy decisions made based on the EU-SILC have contributed to higher income of the elderly population.

  • The minimum old-age pension increased from 171 EUR/mo. to 189 EUR/mo. and the minimum old-age pension for persons with disability since childhood from 206 EUR/mo. to 226 EUR/mo.
  • The national social security allowance to elderly grew from 137 EUR/mo. to 166 EUR/mo.
  • The untaxed minimum of retired went up from 500 EUR/mo. to 1 000 EUR/mo.

To support the poorest population

EU-SILC is pointing towards a great income inequality in Latvia. For example, 23.3 % of the population were at risk of poverty in 2017, moreover, income of the poorest inhabitants was 6.8 times smaller than that of the richest. To achieve sharper increase in the guaranteed minimum income level, the Ombudsman's Office, referring to the EU-SILC, applied to the Constitutional Court with a request for the government to improve living conditions of the population at risk of poverty more significantly. Following that, at-risk-of-poverty rate dropped to 21.6 % in 2023 and the gap between the richest and the poorest narrowed (income of the poorest inhabitants was 6.3 times smaller than that of the richest).

As of 1 January 2025 the most vulnerable part of the population of Latvia is supported even stronger.

  • The guaranteed minimum income level was increased and now reaches 166 EUR/mo. for the first or only person in the household (137 EUR/mo. in 2024) and 116 EUR/mo. for the rest people in the household (96 EUR/mo. in 2024).
  • The income threshold of people in need was increased and now reaches 377 EUR/mo. for the first or only person in the household (343 EUR/mo. in 2024) and 264 EUR/mo. for the rest (240 EUR/mo. in 2024).
  • The maximum income threshold for low-income households was increased and reaches 604 EUR/mo. for the first or only person in the household (549 EUR/mo. in 2024) and 423 EUR/mo. for the rest (384 EUR/mo. in 2024).

In addition, a decision has been made to increase the minimum wage from EUR 700 to EUR 740 as of the 1 January 2025.