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Household surveys are a vital component of national statistical systems. They are the basis for official statistics on social and economic phenomena and are key to tracking progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, despite their importance, household surveys face various challenges, including problems with data quality, timeliness, and policy relevance, among others. Prepared by the United Nations Inter-Secretariat Working Group on Household Surveys (ISWGHS), this paper identifies eight technical priority areas for innovations in household survey design, implementation, and analysis. With these in mind, the paper also presents a set of recommendations for fostering enabling environments at the national and international levels to support the production of more and higher-quality household survey data that are affordable and responsive to policy needs. The paper aims to inform both the considerations of national statistical offices as they weigh priorities and pursue innovations to transform their household survey systems, as well as the work of ISWGHS in executing its mandate to support countries in achieving the SDGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the operations of National Statistical Offices (NSOs), how NSOs responded and adjusted to the disruptions, and how they are transitioning to a post-pandemic equilibrium. The paper uses four rounds of the Global COVID-19 survey of NSOs conducted by The World Bank and the United Nations Statistical Division (UNSD), in coordination with the UN Regional Commissions. The paper highlights the heterogeneity of the COVID-19 disruptions among NSOs and provides evidence that statistical operations have been hardest hit in low- and lower middle-income countries. We find that NSOs with weaker Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure, and those more impacted by declines in funding tended to be more affected and lag in their recovery trajectory. These NSOs tend to be concentrated in low- and lower-middle income countries. The paper concludes that without targeted action the effects of the pandemic will exacerbate and widen pre-existing data production inequalities, despite the best efforts of NSOs that have in most cases responded to the pandemic with the adoption of innovative solutions and have ingeniously used this crisis as an opportunity to accelerate the modernization of the national statistical systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the extent to which Hurricane Mitch affected the rural poor in Honduras and whether national and international aid efforts succeeded in providing relief. One of every two surveyed households incurred medical, housing, or other costs due to Mitch. One in three suffered from a loss in crops. One in five lost assets. One in 10 lost wages or business income. Relief was most often provided by churches and nongovernmental organizations. It consisted mainly of food, clothing, and medicine, and it amounted to less than one-tenth of the losses incurred by households. Key words -- Honduras, Central America, disaster relief, poverty, Mitch

The agricultural sector is undergoing a period of rapid transformation, driven by the powerful and interconnected impacts of climate change, demographic transitions and uneven economic growth around the world. For governments and the international community to navigate this period of upheaval to protect vulnerable populations and ensure positive societal change will require a similar degree of transformation within agricultural data systems. While technological innovation has resulted in substantive improvements in the availability, timeliness and overall quality of agricultural data, many technical and institutional challenges remain. This paper reviews recent developments in the agricultural data landscape, highlights existing constraints to further progress and argues for agricultural economists to take responsibility for building agricultural data systems equipped to respond to the diverse needs of a changing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Household surveys, a pivotal component of every country's national statistical system, continue to be criticized and praised in equal manner. While recognizing their limitations, it is clear that certain types of data must continue to be collected through household surveys, preferably in an integrated manner with other data sources. This is particularly true in the agricultural space for which household and farm surveys will be critical both to collect primary data as well as to validate alternative data sources. Recent methodological gains and technological innovations offer a unique opportunity to address many of the shortcomings of agricultural data. In this article, we briefly describe select examples of such methodological and technological changes, drawing from the Living Standards Measurement Study‐Integrated Surveys on Agriculture, a survey program aimed at improving the availability, quality, and relevance of agricultural data in multitopic, multipurpose household surveys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questions that often come up in contexts where household consumption data are unavailable or missing include: what are the best existing methods to obtain poverty estimates at a single snapshot in time? and over time? and what are the best available methods to study poverty dynamics? A variety of different techniques have been developed to tackle these questions, but unfortunately, they are presented in different forms and lack unified terminology. We offer a review of poverty imputation methods that address contexts ranging from completely missing and partially missing consumption data in cross‐sectional household surveys, to missing panel household data. We present the various existing methods under a common framework, with pedagogical discussion on their intuition. Empirical illustrations are provided using several rounds of household survey data from Vietnam. Furthermore, we also offer a practical guide with detailed instructions on computer programs that can be used to implement the reviewed techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue contributes to the literature on gender differences in sub-Saharan African agriculture primarily by using new and innovative micro-data. The first six articles have a strong focus on understanding the extent and drivers of gender differences in land productivity and use data from nationally representative household surveys that are implemented under the Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) initiative. The LSMS-ISA data are multi-topic, with geo-referenced household and plot locations, and information on production and identity of managers and owners at the plot level. The last two articles in the volume rely on in-depth quantitative and qualitative case study data, which, in combination with the nationally representative data, allow for greater insights into the extent and correlates of gender differences in sub-Saharan African agriculture. While there does seem to be persistent evidence of gender gaps, the studies find the sources of these gaps to vary within and across countries. This makes designing policies to address gender gaps more challenging, yet of crucial importance. What is clear is that the failure to directly and explicitly address the underlying causes of the disparities is likely to end up exacerbating the observed gender gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agricultural development is an essential engine of growth and poverty reduction, yet agricultural data suffer from poor quality and narrow sectoral focus. There are several reasons for this: (1) difficult-to-measure smallholder agriculture is prevalent in poor countries; (2) agricultural data are collected with little coordination across sectors; and (3) poor analysis undermines the demand for high-quality data. This article argues that initiatives like the Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics bode well for the future. Moving from Devarajan’s statistical tragedy’ to Kiregyera’s statistical ‘renaissance’ will take a continued long-term effort by individual countries and development partners. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background. The constrained evidence base of food and nutrition policy-making compromises nutrition programs. Nutrition policy-making must do better than relying exclusively on Food and Agriculture Organization Food Balance Sheets. The strategy of relying on observedweighed food record or 24-hour recall surveys has not proven practical either; they remain few in number, generally not nationally representative, and of dubious external validity. Although Household Consumption and Expenditures Surveys (HCES) have shortcomings, they are increasingly being used to address this information gap. Objective. To promote dialog within the nutrition community, and between it and the greater community of HCES stakeholders, in order to identify their shared agenda and develop a strategy to improve HCES for analyzing food and nutrition issues. Methods. The diverse origins and objectives of HCES are described, the evolution of their use in addressing food and nutrition issues is traced, and their shortcomings are identified. Results. The causes, relative importance, some potential solutions, and the strategic implications of three distinct categories of shortcomings are discussed. Elements of a possible approach and process for strengthening the surveys are outlined, including identifying best practices, developing guidelines and more rigorously analyzing the tradeoffs involved in common, key survey design and implementation decisions. Conclusions. To date, the nutrition community's role in most HCES has been as a passive user of secondary data. The nutrition community must become more involved in the design, implementation, and analysis of HCES by identifying criteria for prioritizing countries, establishing assessment criteria, applying the criteria in retrospective assessments, identifying key shortcomings, and recommending alternatives to ameliorate the shortcomings. Several trends suggest that this is a propitious time for improving the relevance and reliability of HCES. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article documents the long-term welfare effects of household nontraditional agricultural export (NTX) adoption. We use a panel dataset that spans the period 1985-2005, and employ difference-in-differences estimation to investigate the long-term impact of nontraditional agricultural export adoption on changes in household consumption status and asset position in the Central Highlands of Guatemala. Given the heterogeneity in adoption patterns, the analysis differentiates the impact estimates based on a classification of households that takes into account the timing and duration of nontraditional agricultural export adoption. The results show that while, on average, welfare levels have improved for all households irrespective of adoption status and duration, the extent of improvement has varied across groups. Long-term adopters exhibit the smallest increase in the lapse of two decades, in spite of some early gains. Conversely, early adopters who withdrew from nontraditional agricultural export production after reaping the benefits of the boom period of the 1980s are found to have fared better and shown greater improvements in durable asset position and housing conditions than any other category. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses the 2005 Albanian Living Standards Measurement Study Survey and estimates the impact of international migration experience on the occupational mobility of return migrants vis-a-vis working-age Albanian residents that never migrated. Controlling for the non-random nature of international migration and return, the results show that past migration experience increases the likelihood of upward occupational mobility. Since such impact is likely to depend on differences in earning potentials and opportunities for skill acquisition across destination countries, we explore the heterogeneity of impact by host country. The results indicate that the positive effect of past migration experience on upward occupational mobility is driven by past migration experience in Italy and countries further afield, while past migration experience in Greece does not exert any significant impact on mobility outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a general pattern of rural development in which increases in per capita income are associated with a decline in the importance of agricultural production and a rise in the importance of non-agricultural income sources. Following the approach to examining Engel’s Law, we use data from 15 developing countries and a merged dataset to test whether such a pattern emerges. The analysis shows a strong, positive relationship between per capita income and the share of income earned from rural non-agricultural wage employment and a negative relationship between per capita income and agricultural production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1990, migration flows from Albania have been massive, relative to the size of the country and its population, but they have also fluctuated over time. In the first section of the paper various descriptive trends are presented, mainly in graphical form, and discussed. The data come from the 2005 Albanian Living Standards Measurement Survey, and cover the period 1990-2004. The resulting observed trends reflect changing push and pull factors in Albania and the two main host countries, Greece and Italy. The paper presents a hazard approach to modelling Albanian emigration and return migration. This analysis highlights the relevance of networks in Albanian migration dynamics, both to promote emigration and to delay return. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses data from the 2005 Albania Living Standards Measurement Study survey to assess the impact of past migration experience of Albanian households on non-farm business ownership through instrumental variables regression techniques. Considering the differences in earning potentials and opportunities for skill acquisition in different destination countries, we differentiate the impact of past household migration experience by main migrant destinations. The study also explores the heterogeneity of impact based on the timing of migration. The empirical results indicate that past household migration experience exerts a positive impact on the probability of owning a non-farm business. While one additional year in Greece increases the probability of household business ownership by roughly 6 percent, a similar experience in Italy or farther destinations raises the probability by over 25 percent. Although past household migration experience for the period of 1990–2000 is positively associated with the likelihood of owning a household enterprise, a similar association does not exist for the period of 2001–2004. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cet article se penche sur les impacts de la migration sur les décisions de production agricole des ménages, y compris par rapport à l'attribution des tâches, la diversification des récoltes, ainsi que les revenus domestiques agricoles et totaux, en utilisant des données d'une enquête auprès de ménages, en Albanie. Les résultats indiquent que la migration internationale conduit à réduire le temps de travail consacré aux activités agricoles, ainsi qu'à diminuer la diversité des récoltes, mais n'a aucun impact sur le revenu agricole. La migration mène cependant à des revenus globaux plus élevés. Ces résultats suggèrent que la migration internationale ne renforce pas la production agricole au niveau des ménages, mais facilite plutôt la transition vers des activités économiques autres que l'agriculture. Nous considérons également l'effet sur l'activité agricole du départ du foyer de jeunes adultes qui restent cependant en Albanie. Cette migration locale produit l'effet opposé à celui de la migration internationale : plus grands sont les réseaux internes, plus les revenus agricoles et le temps de travail agricole par habitant augmentent.European Journal of Development Research (2009) 21, 448-470. doi:10.1057/ejdr.2009.12; published online 14 May 2009 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from the 2005 Albania Living Standards Measurement Study (ALSMS05) survey, this article analyzes the overall impact of household nonfarm income-generating activities (RIGA) on agricultural expenditures as well as technical efficiency of rural farm households. We also differentiate the impact for subsistence and commercial farmers, who are in the top 25% of the distribution of value of annual agricultural sales. Our results show that on the whole, Albanian rural households utilize their nonfarm earnings not to invest in time-saving, efficiency-increasing technologies, but to move out of crop production. We derive similar findings when we try to estimate the same relation separately for commercial and subsistence farmers. However, for commercial farmers, we find a positive impact of household nonfarm earnings on livestock expenditures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the reliability and validity of household welfare rankings using the Group Ratings (GR) method. The GR aimed to measure the food security status of 142 households in seven villages in Malawi. Sets of informant groups rated households from their own community. Results show that the reliability of the method was no more than fair to moderate, and was particularly low for households falling in the middle category of 'intermittently food insecure'. Consensus ratings from the GR sessions were then compared with a number of alternative indicators of food security from a quantitative household survey. GR were associated with the more visible aspects of food security, such as household asset and livestock holdings, but associations with less visible aspects of food security were weaker. The strength of these associations varied from village to village. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]