Small Area Estimation Methods for Socio-Economic Indicators in Household Surveys

Small area estimation techniques are becoming more and more important for the production of official data. Since 2002 ISTAT has applied small area estimation methods to disseminate estimates of employment and unemployment rates for local labour market areas; furthermore several experimental studies have been carried out for the estimation of the poverty rate at province level. In this paper details of the main studies carried out regarding the application of small area techniques to ISTAT household surveys are reported.