[2] The survey design is based on the original FES, with notable changes, including the introduction of the European Standard Classification of Individual Consumption by Purpose (COICOP).
Another change involved adopting new processing software, SPSS, which has impacted the structure of the datasets.
As of January 2008, the EFS became known as the Living Costs and Food (LCF) module of the Integrated Household Survey (IHS).
[4] The survey consists of a comprehensive household questionnaire, an individual questionnaire for each adult over 16 years of age, a personal expenditure diary kept by each individual over two weeks, and a simplified diary kept by children aged seven to 15.
[5] The data collected in the EFS serves multiple purposes, but it is primarily used for the Retail Prices Index, National Accounts estimates of household expenditure, analysis of the effects of taxes and benefits, and tracking trends in nutrition.