For a number of years the Bank of Italy has been promoting projects aimed at harmonizing SHIW data with those obtained from other surveys, such as the Luxembourg Income Study and the Luxembourg Wealth Study. In recent years our survey has become part of the Eurosystem's Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS), coordinated by the European Central Bank.
The HFCS includes harmonized surveys on household income and wealth from 18 euro-area countries, as well as Poland and Hungary. The network of participants has proved to be a very valuable forum for exchanging experiences in conducting surveys and fostering the adoption of uniform best practices. We hope the expertise acquired on these technical grounds can be useful for the present project.