Guidelines on small area estimation for city statistics and other functional geographies : 2019 edition

The city data collection is one of the regular data collections of Eurostat and the national statistical institutes. The demand for timely and reliable socio-economic data on cities and functional urban areas has significantly increased. Since 2017, the cities and their functional urban areas are legally recognised by the amended NUTS regulation. To produce socio-economic data coming originally from sample surveys at the level of small units such as cities, functional urban areas and other functional geographies is a complex task which requires the application of small area estimation techniques since those functional geographies are usually not incorporated in the sampling design. The aim of these guidelines is to provide the national statistical institutes with a common framework for production of small area estimates. In addition to the timeliness and the quality of the estimates, to assure comparability across Europe and coherence with the estimates at larger territorial scale would be essential. Therefore, the proposed step-by-step procedure of specifying, implementing and evaluating various small area estimation techniques up to the final selection of an optimal approach has a great potential for improvement of quality in official statistics.