Living-Standards Measurement Study

THE LIVING-STANDARDS Measurement Study (LSMS) was established in 1980 by the World Bank Policy Research Department (now called the Development Economics Research Group, or DECRG) to explore ways of improving the type and quality of household data collected by government statistical offices in developing countries, in support of the negotiations between the countries and the World Bank and the adoption of national social policies.

The first surveys were fielded in the Ivory Coast (1985), Peru (1985–86), Ghana (1987–88), and Mauritania (1988); now over 30 developing countries have been surveyed. Funding was initially supplied by the World Bank, and by 1987, surveys started to compete for resources from other development agencies, including USAID.

The objectives of Living-Standards Measurement Studies are to gather household data that can be used to assess household welfare and behavior, to develop new survey methods for monitoring progress, to improve communications between analysts and policymakers, and to evaluate the effect of various current and proposed government policies on the living conditions of the population.

The study is organized as a multitopic questionnaire into four major topics or modules: household, community, prices, and anthropometric data (largely focusing on children). The modules are adapted to the objectives of specific surveys and to the study area, so that not all modules are included in every survey. Household module measures the broadest set of variables with respect to the individual members, the household, and housing. The various dimensions of well-being are questioned, including attitudes and perception of welfare, and the community module examines the local conditions common to all households in the area.

Major changes in the questionnaire structure took place in 1988, introducing health, education, and migration variables, and performing a scale-dependent assessment by urban population size.

Between 800 and 36,000 households are fielded in each study, which includes research on the following groups of topics: household composition, housing characteristics and tenancy, expenditures, and durable goods owned; ethnicity, language, and religion; education, childcare, literacy and education level, and educational costs and accessibility; health status, care expenses, care use and access, fertility, and mortality; employment, dependent and independent activity, employment status, time use, and wages; and credit sources and amount, savings, and borrowing.

The research also includes receipt of social benefits social assistance, maternity and childcare allowances, vouchers, or subsidies; migration motives, areas, and times; expenditures on food and consumption of food produced by the household, daily expenses on food, food value and items, seasonal products, and monthly and annual expenditures; farming and forestry activities, land use, costs and revenues, inputs, machinery, labor and crop production, and farm capital assets; nonagricultural household activities, type, operation, and investment; other income sources, remittances from abroad, gifts, and pensions; and social capital, social participation, exclusion, and citizenship.

In addition the questionnaires include attitudes toward standard of living, perception of welfare, and poverty and its causes; characteristics of the community, collective actions, transport infrastructure and public transportation, road maintenance, community services (electrical energy, public lighting, piped water, sanitation, waste management, telephone, mail service, community security, public market, recreation), education facilities (preprimary, primary, and secondary), health facilities, and social and environmental problems; prices and availability of food and nonfood products commonly purchased; and child anthropometric data (height and weight).

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