Each year, the target primary areas cover the following themes:

- socio-demographic characteristics of households members;

- components of annual income: income from employment, property income, government transfers received, current transfers from other households etc ;

- labour information;

- financial situation of households: savings, debt etc;

- living conditions: indicators of material deprivation, housing and equipment, environment and health.

A so-called "ad hoc" secondary module has been added each year since 2005. It goes in greater depth into certain topics, such as the equipment and commodities of the dwelling, over-indebtedness, material deprivation, etc.

The data from these complementary modules are included in the annual spring report to the European Council.

In addition to this, since 2008, France introduced supplementary questions on social indicators : some of them were present in the former survey on living conditions (EPCV).

Three sets of supplementary questions have been defined, each being applied every three years:

- the first one is on health, associative activities, professional relationships and social participation;

- the second on sports and recreation;

- he third on social mobility and contacts with close personal relations.

Since 2008, a statistical matching is made with the tax sources for the year, in particular with. the tax returns for year N. The amounts of social benefits actually received by the households over the reference year N are collected directly from the three main Benefit funds in France: the national family allowances fund (CNAF), the national old-age insurance fund (CNAV) and the central agricultural social insurance fund (CCMSA).

A self-administered questionnaire on well-being has been introduced since 2010 in the french part of the EU-SILC. Every year, a sub-sample (one-ninths) is concerned.