The direct and indirect methods were applied to EU-SILC data for Austria and Spain, and both perform well at national and regional level. The results are shown in Table 6. In the case of Spain, the ‘median’ reduction of the standard errors when using the average of estimates for three years ranges between 16% for the Gini coefficient to 38% for the quintile share ratio (S80/S20). The ‘mean’ reduction in standard errors is smaller because it is highly affected from few outliers, especially for the poverty headcount ratios (HCR).