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The Analysis of Household Surveys : A Microeconometric Approach to Development Policy
The collection of household survey data in developing countries is hardly a new phenomenon. The National Sample Survey Organization in India has been collecting such data on a regular basis since the 1940s, and there are many other countries with long−running and well−established surveys. Until recently, however, the handling and processing of large microeconomic data sets was both cumbersome and expensive, so that survey data were not widely used beyond the production of the original survey reports. In the last ten or fifteen years, the availability of cheap and convenient microcomputers has changed both the collection and analysis of household survey data. Calculations that could be done only on multimillion−dollar mainframes in 1980?and then with some difficulty?are now routinely carried out on cheap laptop computers. These same machines can be carried into the field and used to record and edit data as they are provided by the respondents. As a result, survey data are becoming available in a more timely fashion, months rather than years after the end of the survey; freshly collected data are much more useful for policy exercises than are those that are many years old. At the same time, analysts have become more interested in exploring ways in which survey data can be used to inform and to improve the policy process. Such explorations run from the tabulations and graphical presentation of levels of living to more basic research on household behavior.Purpose and intended audience This book is about the analysis of household survey data from developing countries and about how such data can be used to cast light on a range of policy issues. Much of the analysis works with household budget data, collected from income and expenditure surveys, though I shall occasionally address topics that require wider information. I shall use data from several different economies to illustrate the analysis, drawing examples of policy issues from economies as diverse as Cote d'Ivoire, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Taiwan (China), and Thailand. I shall be concerned with methodology as well as substance, and one of the aims of the book is to bring together the relevant statistical and econometric methods that are useful for building the bridge between data and policy. The book is not intended as a manual for the analysis of survey data?it is hardly possible to reduce policy research to a formula?but it does provide a number of illustrations of what can be done, with fairly detailed explanations of how to do it. Nor can a "how−to" book provide a comprehensive review of all the development topics that have been addressed with household survey data; that purpose has already been largely met by the microeconomic survey papers in the three volumes of the Handbook of Development Economics. Instead, I have focused on topics on which I have worked myself, in the hope that the lack of coverage will be compensated for by the detailed knowledge that can only come from having carried out the empirical research. The restriction to my own work also enables me to provide the relevant computer code for almost all of the empirical results and graphics, something that could hardly be combined with the broad coverage of a genuine survey. The Appendix gives code and programs using STATA; in my experience, this is the most convenient package for working with data from household surveys. The programs are not a package; users will have to substitute their own data sets and will need sufficient basic knowledge of STATA to adapt the code. Nevertheless, the programs provide a template for generating results similar to those presented and discussed here. I have also tried to keep the programs simple, sometimes at the expense of efficiency or elegance, so that it should not be too difficult to translate the logic into other packages. I hope that the material will be of interest to development practitioners, in the World Bank and elsewhere, as well as to a more academic audience of students of economic development. The material in the first two chapters is also designed to help readers interpret applied econometric work based on survey data. But the audience that I most want to reach is that of researchers in developing countries. Statistical offices, research institutes, and universities in developing countries are now much less constrained by computation than they were only a few years ago, and the calculations described here can be done on personal computers using readily available and relatively inexpensive software. I have also tried to keep the technical presentation at a relatively modest level. I take for granted most of what would be familiar from a basic course in econometrics, but I devote a good deal of space to expositions of useful techniques?such as nonparametric density and regression estimation, or the bootstrap?that are neither widely taught in elementary econometrics courses nor described in standard texts. Nevertheless, there are points where there is an inevitable conflict between simplicity, on the one hand, and clarity and precision, on the other. When necessary I have "starred" those sections or subsections in which the content is either necessarily technical or is of interest only to those who wish to try to replicate the analysis. Occasional "technical notes," usually starred, are shorter digressions that can readily be skipped at a first reading. Policy and data: methodological issues Household surveys provide a rich source of data on economic behavior and its links to policy. They provide information at the level of the individual household about many variables that are either set or influenced by policy, such as prices, transfers, or the provision of schools and clinics. They also collect data on outcomes that we care about and that are affected by the policy variables, such as levels of nutrition, expenditure patterns, educational attainments, earnings, and health. Many impor−
Ketersediaan
| Call Number | Location | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Tan 339. 407 23 Dea a | PSB lt.dasar - Pascasarjana | 1 |
| 339.40723 DEA a | PSB lt.1 - B. Penunjang | 1 |
| Penerbit | Washington The World Bank., 1997 |
|---|---|
| Edisi | - |
| Subjek | Household surveys?Developing countries?Methodology Developing countries?Economic conditions?Econometr |
| ISBN/ISSN | - |
| Klasifikasi | NONE |
| Deskripsi Fisik | - |
| Info Detail Spesifik | - |
| Other Version/Related | Tidak tersedia versi lain |
| Lampiran Berkas | Tidak Ada Data |