Difficulties in the Implementation of Household Panel Studies: The Case of Spain

In Spain, the implementation of household panels faces a number of both technical and methodological difficulties that in our opinion do not occur or at least are less frequent in the Northern and Central European countries. We are particularly referring to some lack of experience in the implementation of these techniques, whose practice is still quite new, but above all to the persistent problems in the Spanish statistical system, not able yet to reliably supply an information as basic as, for instance the total population or the number of unemployed, let alone other data such as the household income, the black economy, which nowadays it still seems very far from providing with a minimum level of realibility.