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Consumption expenditure has long been the preferred measure of household living standards. However, accurate measurement is a challenge and household expenditure surveys vary widely across many dimensions, including the level of reporting, the length of the reference period, and the degree of commodity detail. These variations occur both across countries and also over time within countries. There is little current understanding of the implications of such changes for spatially and temporally consistent measurement of household consumption and poverty. A field experiment in Tanzania tests eight alternative methods to measure household consumption on a sample of 4,000 households. There are significant differences between consumption reported by the benchmark personal diary and other diary and recall formats. Under-reporting is particularly relevant in illiterate households and for urban respondents completing household diaries; recall modules measure lower consumption than a personal diary, with larger gaps among poorer households and households with more adult members. Variations in reporting accuracy by household characteristics are also discussed and differences in measured poverty as a result of survey design are explored. The study concludes with recommendations for methods of survey based consumption measurement in low-income countries.

Consumption --- Expenditure --- Poverty Lines --- Regional Economic Development --- Rural Poverty Reduction --- Survey design --- Urban development

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Advances in agricultural data production provide ever-increasing opportunities for pushing the research frontier in agricultural economics and designing better agricultural policy. As new technologies present opportunities to create new and integrated data sources, researchers face trade-offs in survey design that may reduce measurement error or increase coverage. This paper first reviews the econometric and survey methodology literatures that focus on the sources of measurement error and coverage bias in agricultural data collection. Second, it provides examples of how agricultural data structure affects testable empirical models. Finally, it reviews the challenges and opportunities offered by technological innovation to meet old and new data demands and address key empirical questions, focusing on the scalable data innovations of greatest potential impact for empirical methods and research.

Agricultural Knowledge and Information Systems --- Agricultural Research --- Agricultural Sector Economics --- Agriculture --- Data Collection --- Survey Design

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Agricultural labor accounts for the largest share of child labor worldwide. Yet, measurement of farm labor statistics is challenging due to its inherent seasonality, variable and irregular work schedules, and the varying saliences of individuals' work activities. The problem is further complicated by the presence of widespread gender stratification of work and social lives. This study reports the findings of three randomized survey design interventions over the agricultural coffee calendar in rural Ethiopia to address whether response by proxy rather than self-report has effects on the measurement of child labor statistics within and across seasons. While the estimates do not report differences for boys across all seasons, the analysis shows sizable self/proxy discrepancies in child labor statistics for girls. Overall, the results highlight concerns on the use of survey proxy respondents in agricultural labor, particularly for girls. The main findings have important implications for policymakers about data collection in rural areas in developing countries.

Child Labor --- Farm Labor --- Gender and Rural Development --- Labor Markets --- Labor Policies --- Labor Statistics --- Rural Labor Markets --- Seasonality --- Survey Design

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This paper proposes a new method for improving the design effect of household surveys based on a two-stage design in which the first stage clusters, or primary selection units, are stratified along administrative boundaries. Improvement of the design effect can result in more precise survey estimates (smaller standard errors and confidence intervals) or reduction of the necessary sample size, that is, a reduction in the budget needed for a survey. The proposed method is based on the availability of a previously conducted poverty mapping, that is, spatial descriptions of the distribution of poverty, which are finely disaggregated in small geographic units, such as cities, municipalities, districts, or other administrative partitions of a country that are linked to primary selection units. Such information is then used to select primary selection units with systematic sampling by introducing further implicit stratification in the survey design, to maximize the improvement of the design effect. The proposed methodology has been implemented for the new 2021 Household Budget Survey in Tunisia, conducted under a cooperation project funded by the World Bank. The underlying poverty mapping is based on the 2015 Household Budget Survey and the 2014 Population and Housing Census.

Household Survey --- Implicit Stratification --- Income Distribution --- Inequality --- Poverty Mapping --- Poverty Measurement --- Poverty Monitoring and Analysis --- Poverty Reduction --- Survey Design

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This paper assesses the impact of three methodologies of food data collection on the welfare distribution, and poverty and inequality measures in Niger. The first methodology is a 7-day recall period, the second one is a usual month, and the third one is a 7-day diary. The paper finds that there is a difference in the distribution of welfare between, on the one hand, the two first methodologies (7-day recall and a usual month, which give results close to each other) and, on the other hand, the 7-day diary method. When considering annual per capita consumption, the 7-day diary lags the 7-day recall by 28 percent. This gap is not only at the mean of the distribution, it has been found at any level. These differences lead to differences in poverty and inequality measures even when alternate poverty lines are used. This study underscores the problem that many developing countries face when it comes to monitoring poverty indicators over time where different methodologies have been used over the years.

Consumption --- Expenditure --- Food & Beverage Industry --- Industry --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Poverty Lines --- Poverty Measurement --- Poverty Reduction --- Rural Poverty Reduction --- Survey Design