Expenditure and Consumption Survey, PECS 2010 - Palestine

Abstract --------------------------- THE CLEANED AND HARMONIZED VERSION OF THE SURVEY DATA PRODUCED AND PUBLISHED BY THE ECONOMIC RESEARCH FORUM REPRESENTS 100% OF THE ORIGINAL SURVEY DATA COLLECTED BY THE PALESTINIAN CENTRAL BUREAU OF STATISTICS The basic goal of the Household and Consumption Survey is to provide a necessary database for formulating national policies at various levels. This survey provides the contribution of the household sector to the Gross National Product (GNP). It determines the incidence of poverty, and provides weighted data which reflects the relative importance of the consumption items to be employed in determining the benchmark for rates and prices of items and services. Furthermore, this survey is a fundamental cornerstone in the process of studying the nutritional status in the Palestinian territory. The raw survey data provided by the Statistical Agency were cleaned and harmonized by the Economic Research Forum, in the context of a major project that started in 2009. During which extensive efforts have been exerted to acquire, clean, harmonize, preserve and disseminate micro data of existing household surveys in several Arab countries. Geographic coverage --------------------------- The survey data covers urban, rural and camp areas in West Bank and Gaza Strip. Analysis unit --------------------------- 1- Household/family. 2- Individual/person. Universe --------------------------- The survey covered all Palestinian households who are usually resident in the Palestinian Territory during 2010. Kind of data --------------------------- Sample survey data [ssd] Sampling procedure --------------------------- THE CLEANED AND HARMONIZED VERSION OF THE SURVEY DATA PRODUCED AND PUBLISHED BY THE ECONOMIC RESEARCH FORUM REPRESENTS 100% OF THE ORIGINAL SURVEY DATA COLLECTED BY THE PALESTINIAN CENTRAL BUREAU OF STATISTICS Sample and Frame: ============ The sampling frame consists of all enumeration areas which were enumerated in 2007, each numeration area consists of buildings and housing units with average of about 120 households in it. These enumeration areas are used as primary sampling units PSUs in the first stage of the sampling selection. Sample Design: ========== The sample is a stratified cluster systematic random sample with two stages: First stage: selection of a systematic random sample of 192 enumeration areas. Second stage: selection of a systematic random sample of 24 households from each enumeration area selected in the first stage. Note: in Jerusalem Governorate (J1), 13 enumeration areas were selected; then in the second phase, a group of households from each enumeration area were chosen using census-2007 method of delineation and enumeration. This method was adopted to ensure household response is to the maximum to comply with the percentage of non-response as set in the sample design.Enumeration areas were distributed to twelve months and the sample for each quarter covers sample strata (Governorate, locality type) Sample strata: The population was divided by: ==================== 1- Governorate 2- Type of Locality (urban, rural, refugee camps) Sample Size: ======== The calculated sample size for the Expenditure and Consumption Survey in 2010 is about 3,757 households, 2,574 households in West Bank and 1,183 households in Gaza Strip. Mode of data collection --------------------------- Face-to-face [f2f] Research instrument --------------------------- The questionnaire consists of two main parts: First: Survey's questionnaire Part of the questionnaire is to be filled in during the visit at the beginning of the month, while the other part is to be filled in at the end of the month. The questionnaire includes: Control sheet: Includes household’s identification data, date of visit, data on the fieldwork and data processing team, and summary of household’s members by gender. Household roster: Includes demographic, social, and economic characteristics of household’s members. Housing characteristics: Includes data like type of housing unit, number of rooms, value of rent, and connection of housing unit to basic services like water, electricity and sewage. In addition, data in this section includes source of energy used for cooking and heating, distance of housing unit from transportation, education, and health centers, and sources of income generation like ownership of farm land or animals. Food and Non-Food Items: includes food and non-food items, and household record her expenditure for one month. Durable Goods Schedule: Includes list of main goods like washing machine, refrigerator,TV. Assistances and Poverty: Includes data about cash and in kind assistances (assistance value,assistance source), also collecting data about household situation, and the procedures to cover expenses. Monthly and annual income: Data pertinent to household’s income from different sources is collected at the end of the registration period. Second: List of goods The classification of the list of goods is based on the recommendation of the United Nations for the SNA under the name Classification of Personal Consumption by purpose. The list includes 55 groups of expenditure and consumption where each is given a sequence number based on its importance to the household starting with food goods, clothing groups, housing, medical treatment, transportation and communication, and lastly durable goods. Each group consists of important goods. The total number of goods in all groups amounted to 667 items for goods and services. Groups from 1-21 includes goods pertinent to food, drinks and cigarettes. Group 22 includes goods that are home produced and consumed by the household. The groups 23-45 include all items except food, drinks and cigarettes. The groups 50-55 include durable goods. The data is collected based on different reference periods to represent expenditure during the whole year except for cars where data is collected for the last three years. Registration form The registration form includes instructions and examples on how to record consumption and expenditure items. The form includes columns: 1.Monetary: If the good is purchased, or in kind: if the item is self produced. 2.Title of the service of the good 3.Unit of measurement (kilogram, liter, number) 4. Quantity 5. Value The pages of the registration form are colored differently for the weeks of the month. The footer for each page includes remarks that encourage households to participate in the survey. The following are instructions that illustrate the nature of the items that should be recorded: 1. Monetary expenditures during purchases 2. Purchases based on debts 3.Monetary gifts once presented 4. Interest at pay 5. Self produced food and goods once consumed 6. Food and merchandise from commercial project once consumed 7. Merchandises once received as a wage or part of a wage from the employer. Cleaning operations --------------------------- Raw Data ======= Data editing took place through a number of stages, including: 1. Office editing and coding 2. Data entry 3. Structure checking and completeness 4. Structural checking of SPSS data files Harmonized Data ============ - The Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) is used to clean and harmonize the datasets. - The harmonization process starts with cleaning all raw data files received from the Statistical Agency. - Cleaned data files are then all merged to produce one data file on the individual level containing all variables subject to harmonization. - A country-specific program is generated for each dataset to generate/ compute/ recode/ rename/ format/ label harmonized variables. - A post-harmonization cleaning process is then conducted on the data. - Harmonized data is saved on the household as well as the individual level, in SPSS and converted to STATA format. Response rate --------------------------- The survey sample consisted of 4,767 households, which includes 4,608 households of the original sample plus 159 households as an additional sample. A total of 3,757 households completed the interview: 2,574 households from the West Bank and 1,183 households in the Gaza Strip. Weights were modified to account for the non-response rate. The response rate in the Palestinian Territory 28.1% (82.4% in the West Bank was and 81.6% in Gaza Strip). Sampling error estimates --------------------------- The impact of errors on data quality was reduced to a minimum due to the high efficiency and outstanding selection, training, and performance of the fieldworkers. Procedures adopted during the fieldwork of the survey were considered a necessity to ensure the collection of accurate data, notably: 1) Develop schedules to conduct field visits to households during survey fieldwork. The objectives of the visits and the data collected on each visit were predetermined. 2) Fieldwork editing rules were applied during the data collection to ensure corrections were implemented before the end of fieldwork activities. 3) Fieldworkers were instructed to provide details in cases of extreme expenditure or consumption by the household. 4) Questions on income were postponed until the final visit at the end of the month. 5) Validation rules were embedded in the data processing systems, along with procedures to verify data entry and data edit.