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Accurate estimates of men's and women's employment are necessary for understanding sources of productivity and growth and designing well-targeted, gender-sensitive labour policies. This paper aims to address a key question—how respondent selection in household and labour force surveys affects these estimates—by leveraging two concurrent national surveys in Malawi that relied on the same questionnaire and field teams but differed in their approach to respondent selection. As compared with direct and private interviews with respondents, the ‘business-as-usual’ approach that allows for proxy reporting when targeted respondents are not available, as well as a mix of other standard survey approaches often used under time and resource constraints, is associated with significantly lower reporting of employment across a range of wage and self-employment activities. Although the effects are seemingly limited in absolute terms, they are quite large in relative terms, vis-à-vis the average participation rates and they tend to be more pronounced for women respondents and concerning questions with longer/12-month recall periods. The analysis also examines how household wealth, proxy reporting and difficulties associated with interpreting questions may be linked to lower reporting in the business-as-usual approach, and which can be examined in future methodological experimentation.

This paper reports on a randomized experiment conducted among Malawian agricultural households to study nonclassical measurement error in self-reported plot area and farmers’ responses to new information (the objective plot area measure) that was provided to correct nonclassical measurement error. Farmers' pre-treatment self-reported plot areas exhibit considerable nonclassical measurement error, most of which follows a regression-to-mean pattern with respect to plot area, and another 18 percent of which arises from asymmetric rounding to half-acre increments. Randomized provision of GPS-based measures of true plot area generates four important findings. First, farmers incompletely update mistaken self-reports; most nonclassical measurement error persists even after the provision of true plot area measures. Second, farmers update asymmetrically in response to information, with upward corrections being far more common than downward ones even though most plot sizes were initially overestimated. Third, the magnitude of updating varies by true plot area and the magnitude and direction of initial nonclassical measurement error. Fourth, the information treatment affects self-reported information about non-land inputs, such as fertilizer and labor, indicating that the effects of measurement error and updating spill over across variables. Nonclassical measurement error reflects behavioral anomalies and carries implications for both survey data collection methods and the design of information-based interventions.

Across Sub-Saharan African countries with customary tenure systems and low levels of documented land ownership, there are limited nationally representative insights on men and women landowners’ rights over land. Variations in institutions and norms governing land ownership further complicate cross-country comparisons. Using machine learning techniques and nationally representative, intrahousehold survey data elicited in private from men and women on their ownership of assets, this paper creates unique profiles of landowners in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Tanzania, anchored in a range of constructs related to self-reported rights and control over land parcels. The analysis reveals a high degree of cross-country consistency in the new insights. Landowners, particularly women, often do not have full rights and decision-making power over land. Multiple correspondence analysis demonstrates that transfer rights (rights to bequeath, sell, rent out, and use as collateral) contribute the most to the variation in the composition of the constructs related to rights and control over land. Hierarchical clustering shows that landowners can effectively be clustered into three categories: (1) owners with mostly exclusive transfer rights, (2) owners with mostly joint transfer rights, and (3) owners with no/limited transfer rights. Owners with transfer rights tend to have all other rights and measures of control. Women are overrepresented in the cluster of landowners with no/limited transfer rights, and in moving from the cluster with mostly joint transfer rights to the one with mostly exclusive transfer rights, the increase in the share of individuals not needing permission to exercise any right is considerably greater among women than men.

A better understanding of how individual wealth and time use are linked—across paid, unpaid, and leisure activities —is important for targeting widespread gender inequalities in time allocation, as well as in accessing economic opportunities. The lack of reliable, individual-level data on asset ownership across different subpopulations, however, has limited discussions of these issues in the literature. Using a unique nationally representative survey from Cambodia, this paper shows that individual wealth, as measured through self-reported ownership of physical and financial assets, is significantly associated with time allocation to different activities. The role of asset ownership in time use is also stronger, particularly among women, vis-à-vis the competing proxies for socioeconomic status. Ownership of financial accounts, motorized vehicles, and mobile phones —all of which can improve access to networks, markets, and services—is associated with less time in unpaid work, and in some cases greater time in paid work, specifically among women in off-farm jobs. There are also distinct gender differences in how men and women shift their time away from leisure and childcare, highlighting the importance of social norms in choices over time use. The analysis highlights the utility of integrated, intra-household, individual-disaggregated data collection on asset ownership, time use, and employment in lower-income contexts.

Established in 2016, the World Bank living standards measurement study - plus (LSMS+) program works to enhance the availability and quality of intra-household, self-reported, individual-disaggregated survey data collected in low- and middle-income countries on key dimensions of men’s and women’s economic opportunities and welfare. This report presents an overview of the LSMS+ program and provides operational guidance regarding individual-disaggregated data collection in large-scale household surveys, based on the experience with and analysis of the national surveys that have been implemented by the respective national statistical offices (NSOs) in Cambodia, Ethiopia, Malawi, Tanzania over the period 2016-2020, with support from the LSMS+ program.

Established in 2016, the World Bank living standards measurement study - plus (LSMS+) program works to enhance the availability and quality of intra-household, self-reported, individual-disaggregated survey data collected in low- and middle-income countries on key dimensions of men’s and women’s economic opportunities and welfare. This report presents findings on gender differences in labor market outcomes and ownership of physical and financial assets in Sub-Saharan Africa, based on the national surveys that have been implemented by the respective national statistical offices (NSOs) in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Tanzania over the period 2016-2020, with support from the LSMS+ program.

Established in 2016, the World Bank living standards measurement study - plus (LSMS+) program works to enhance the availability and quality of intra-household, self-reported, individual-disaggregated survey data collected in low- and middle-income countries on key dimensions of men’s and women’s economic opportunities and welfare. This report presents findings on gender differences in labor market outcomes and ownership of physical and financial assets in Cambodia, based on a national survey that was implemented by the National Institute of Statistics (NIS) in 2019, with support from the LSMS+ program.

Session ID 4730, Paper# 19408

Session ID 4730, Paper# 19342

Foundational to the monitoring of international goals on land ownership and rights are the household survey respondents who provide the required individual-disaggregated data. Leveraging two national surveys in Malawi that differed in their approach to respondent selection, this study shows that, compared with the international best practice of privately interviewing adults about their personal asset ownership and rights, the business-as-usual approach of interviewing the most knowledgeable household member(s) on adult household members’ ownership of and rights to assets leads to (i) higher rates of exclusive reported and economic ownership of agricultural land among men, and (ii) lower rates of joint reported and economic ownership among women. Further, substantial agreement exists on agricultural landowners and rights holders, as reported by the privately-interviewed spouses. When discrepancies emerge, proxies for greater household status for women are positively associated with the scenarios where women attribute at least some land ownership to themselves.

Accurate estimates of men's and women's employment are at the heart of understanding sources of productivity and economic growth and designing well-targeted, gender-sensitive labor policies. How respondent selection in household and labor force surveys affects these estimates is a key question, for which experimental evidence outside high-income settings is limited. Leveraging two concurrent, national surveys in Malawi that differed in their approach to respondent selection, the analysis shows that, compared with the best practice of privately interviewing adults about their employment outcomes, the common "business-as-usual" approach that permits the use of proxy respondents and non-private/group interviews leads to significant underreporting of employment across a range of wage and self-employment activities, with stronger effects for women and for a longer (12-month) recall period. Under the business-as-usual approach, the main factors linked to underreporting include household wealth, proxy reporting, and potential difficulties associated with interpreting/answering questions on household non-farm enterprises.

To document the relative accuracy of methods for microdata collection on root and tuber crop production, an experiment was implemented in Malawi over a 12-month period, randomly assigning cassava-producing households to one of four approaches: daily diary-keeping, with semi-weekly supervision visits; daily diary-keeping, with semi-weekly supervisory phone calls; two six-month recall interviews, with six months in between; and a single 12-month recall interview. Lapses in diary-keeping can underestimate true production, albeit to a lesser degree compared to recall. And the comparisons between the diary variants and the variation in underestimation by recall period are unclear ex ante. The analysis reveals that compared to traditional diary-keeping, the household-level annual cassava production is 295 kilograms higher, on average, (and assumed as closer to the truth) under diary-keeping with phone calls. This effect corresponds to 28 percent of the average traditional diary-keeping production estimate. Although the difference between the estimates based on six-month recall and traditional diary-keeping is statistically insignificant, 12-month recall underestimates annual production, on average, by 516 kilograms and 221 kilograms, respectively, compared to diary-keeping with phone calls and traditional diary-keeping. While the recall-based approaches both underestimate true production, six-month recall does so to a lesser extent. The evidence additionally demonstrates likely gross overestimation in international and ministerial statistics on cassava yields in Malawi. For improved microdata on root and tuber crop production, the adoption of (i) diary-keeping with phone calls (particularly if deployed in a broader mobile phone–based survey) or (ii) six-month recall, as a second-best alternative, is recommended.

VCU Theses and Dissertations

This study presents the findings from MEXA: Methodological Experiment on Measuring Asset Ownership from Gender Perspective. MEXA was implemented in 2014 by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics with support from the World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) program and the United Nations Evidence and Data for Gender Equality (EDGE) project. MEXA aimed to capture the impacts of different respondent selection protocols and questionnaire designs on individual-level measures of ownership of and rights to physical and financial assets in household surveys.