Living Standards Measurement Survey 2004 (Wave 3 Panel) - Albania

Abstract
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Over the past decade, Albania has been undergoing a transition toward a market economy and a more open society. It has faced severe internal and external challenges, such as lack of basic infrastructure, rapid collapse of output and inflation rise after the collapse of the communist regime, turmoil during the 1997 pyramid crisis, and social and economic instability because of the 1999 Kosovo crisis. Despite these shocks, Albanian economy has recovered from a very low income level through a sustained growth during the past few years, even though it remains one of the poorest countries in Europe, with GDP per capita at around 1,300$. Based on the Living Standard Measurement Study (LSMS) 2002 survey data (wave 1, henceforth), for the first time in Albania INSTAT has computed an absolute poverty line on a nationally representative poverty survey at household level. Based on this welfare measure, one quarter (25.4 percent) of the Albanian population, or close to 790,000 individuals, were defined as poor in 2002. The distribution of poverty is also disproportionately rural, as 68 percent of the poor are in rural areas, against 32 percent in urban areas (as compared to a total urban population well over 40 percent). These estimates are quite sensitive to the choice of the poverty line, as there are a large number of households clustered around the poverty line. Income related poverty is compounded by the severe lack of access to basic infrastructure, education and health services, clean water, etc., and the ability of the Government to address these issues is complicated by high levels of internal and external migration that are not well understood. The availability of a nationally representative survey is crucial as the paucity of household-level information has been a constraining factor in the design, implementation and evaluation of economic and social programs in Albania. Two recent surveys carried out by the Albanian Institute of Statistics (INSTAT) -the 1998 Living Conditions Survey (LCS) and the 2000 Household Budget Survey (HBS) - drew attention, once again, to the need for accurately measuring household welfare according to well-accepted standards, and for monitoring these trends on a regular basis. This target is well-achieved by drawing information over time on a panel component of LSMS 2002 households, namely the Albanian Panel Survey (APS), conducted in 2003 and 2004. An increasing attention to the policies aimed at achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is paid by the National Parliament of Albania, recently witnessed by the resolution approved in July 2003, where it pushes “… the total commitment of both state structures and civil society to achieve the MDGs in Albania by 2015”. The path towards a sustained growth is constantly monitored through the National Reports on Progress toward Achieving the MDGs, which involves a close collaboration of the UN with the national institutions, led by the National Strategy for Social and Economic Development (NSSED) Department of the Ministry of Finance. Also, in the process leading to the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP; also known in Albania as Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy, GPRS), the Government of Albania reinforced its commitment to strengthening its own capacity to collect and analyse on a regular basis information it needs to inform policy-makers. In its first phase (2001-2006), this monitoring system will include the following data collection instruments:

(i) Population and Housing Census
(ii) Living Standards Measurement Surveys every 3 years
(iii) Annual panel surveys.

The focus during this first phase of the monitoring system is on a periodic LSMS (in 2002 and 2005), followed by panel surveys on a sub-sample of LSMS households (APS 2003, 2004 and 2006), drawing heavily on the 2001 census information. Here our target is to illustrate the main characteristics of the APS 2004 data with reference to the LSMS. The survey work was undertaken by the Living Standards Unit of INSTAT, with the technical assistance of the World Bank.

Geographic coverage
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National

Analysis unit
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Households

Kind of data
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Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure
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(a) SAMPLE DESIGN

Panel sample, with LSMS 2002 and 2004 The APS 2004 collects information on 1,797 valid observations at household level and 7,476 at individual level. The sample of the second and third waves of the panel (APS) has been selected from the LSMS 2002 in order to be representative of Albanian households and individuals at national level. The LSMS 2002 differs from the APS 2003 and 2004 in that the former is designed to be representative at regional level (Mountain, Central, Coastal and Tirana) as well as for urban and rural domains, while the latter are for last domains only (urban and rural) LSMS 2002 sample design The LSMS is based on a probability sample of housing units (HUs) within the 16 strata of the sampling frame. It is divided in three regions: Coastal, Central, and Mountain Area. In addition, urban areas of Tirana are also considered as a separate region/stratum. The three regions are further stratified in major cities (the most important cities in the region), other urban (other cities in the region), and rural. The city of Tirana and its suburbs have been implicitly stratified to improve the efficiency of the sample design. Each stratum has been divided in Enumeration Area (EA), in accordance with the 2001 Census data, and each Primary Sampling Unit (PSU) selected with probabilities proportional to the number of occupied HUs in the EA. Every EA includes occupied and unoccupied HUs. Occupied rather than total units have been used because of the large number of empty dwellings registered in the Census data. The Housing Unit, defined as the space occupied by one household, is taken as sampling unit because is more permanent and easier to identify compared to the household. 10 EAs for each major city (75 for Tirana) and 65 EAs for each rural region -with the exception of the mountain area which is over-represented (75 EAs)- are selected. 8 households, plus 4 eventual substitutes, have been systematically selected in each EAs. As the LSMS consists of 450 EAs, total sample size is 3,600 households.

(b) STRATIFICATION

The panel component selected from the LSMS is designed to provide a nationally representative sample of households and individuals within Albania. It consists of roughly half of the households in the 2002 LSMS, interviewed both in 2003 and 2004. Contrarily to what done for the LSMS, no over-sampling in the Mountain Area has been performed for the panel survey. The sample is designed to minimize the variability in households' selection probabilities. It ensures national representativeness by matching the sample distribution across strata with the population distribution drawn from 2001 Census data. In Table 3 the ex-ante sampling scheme of the 2003-2004 APS is shown. Compared to the LSMS design, statistical precision has improved. Under equal stratum population variances hypothesis, sample design effects are expected to be around 1.02, compared to the 1.28 of the LSMS sample. Moreover, further precision is obtained by keeping all 450 EAs of LSMS in the panel sample, thus reducing the eventual bias due to clustering because of new design. Finally, the panel survey has a number of peculiar features that should be considered when using the data. The sample is designed to focus on individuals, who have been also traced when moving from the original household to a new one. This possibility represents the only way a household can enter the panel sample if it has not been already interviewed in the wave 1 (or in wave 2 for the APS 2004). If an original survey member (OSM) moves to a new household, his/her old and new household -and their members- are both included in the panel sample. Though a moved OSM will be present in the roster of both sampled households, he/she is a valid member only in the new one. In the old household he/she is considered as "moved away", hence not a valid member. This might generate some confusion. Three modalities exist to classify an individual in the third wave. First, when he/she is an OSM, that is a respondent interviewed both in wave 1 and 2. Second, when he is a re-joiner from 2002, that is an OSM not interviewed in 2003 (i.e. because temporarily absent) who returns in 2004. Third, when he/she is a new member, whenever he/she is a newborn of an original household, a member joined by an OSM or a person who co-resides with an original survey household. So, the APS is an indefinite life panel study, without replacement by drawing new sample units. From wave 2, only individuals aged 15 years and over are considered valid members, hence eligible for the interview. Individuals moved out of Albania are not accounted as valid for this survey year, though they are still eligible for future waves.

Mode of data collection
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Face-to-face [f2f]

Cleaning operations
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A first data cleaning took place in Albania and implemented by INSTAT in collaboration with ISER and Government of Albania consultants. The cleaning process has involved following activities: 1. defining data checking routines and writing the syntax code of the cleaning programs; 2. generating lists of outliers and inconsistencies for each module to be checked against paper questionnaires; During the first few days, data cleaning operators have been working on the Export Procedure of the Data Entry Program to check if data export succeeded and to finalize the English version of the dictionaries and error messages. Some changes were made to the Export Procedure due to a problem on the “Agriculturea2” file conversion and to the dictionary structure to check over correct labelling of exported data. The dictionary used during data entry was in Albanian language. So, an accurate comparison of the Albanian and English versions was done to ensure consistency (except for the labelling) between the two. This work was performed by using a freeware software called “Winmerge”, which underlines all the differences between two text files. Phase two has been devoted to update the Batch Edit (BE) procedure of the Data Entry Program, where a little correction was required to avoid some error messages incorrectly issued by the BE. Afterwards, the routine was applied to check all the errors, and a program in Access was run to associate PSU and Data-entry operator code to each questionnaire selected by the BE. Once obtained the procedure report, a pool of four people from INSTAT started to check all the reported errors and make the necessary adjustments. A copy of all original data in CSPRO software was made. During this work, some atypical circumstances were reported: sometimes errors or warning detected possible data-entry or interviewer problems. For these cases, no correction was made, and the occurrence was highlighted in the report. Most of the problems reported by the BE were referred to the “distance that seemed to be inconsistent with the walking time” and “number of hours worked per week” higher than 70.

摘要
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在过去十年中，阿尔巴尼亚正经历从计划经济向市场经济及更开放社会的转型。它面临着严峻的内外部挑战，如基础设施不足、共产主义政权崩溃后产出迅速下降和通货膨胀上升、1997年金字塔危机期间的动荡，以及1999年科索沃危机引发的社会经济不稳定。尽管遭遇这些冲击，阿尔巴尼亚经济在过去几年中通过持续的增长从极低的收入水平恢复过来，尽管它仍然是欧洲最贫穷的国家之一，人均GDP约为1,300美元。基于2002年生活水平测量研究（LSMS）的调查数据（第一波次，以下简称），INSTAT首次在阿尔巴尼亚针对全国代表性贫困调查的户级水平计算了绝对贫困线。根据这一福利指标，2002年有四分之一（25.4%）的阿尔巴尼亚人口，或近79万个体，被定义为贫困。贫困的分布也极度不平衡，68%的贫困人口居住在农村地区，而城市地区仅为32%（与总数超过40%的城市人口相比）。这些估计对贫困线的选择非常敏感，因为有许多家庭聚集在贫困线附近。收入相关的贫困因基本基础设施、教育、医疗服务、清洁水等严重缺乏而加剧，而政府解决这些问题的能力因内部和外部迁移的高水平而复杂化，这些迁移并未得到充分理解。国家代表性调查的可用性至关重要，因为家庭层面的信息匮乏一直是阿尔巴尼亚经济和社会项目设计、实施和评估的制约因素。阿尔巴尼亚统计局（INSTAT）最近进行的两项调查——1998年生活水平调查（LCS）和2000年家庭预算调查（HBS）——再次引起了人们对根据公认标准准确测量家庭福利以及定期监测这些趋势的必要性。通过在LSMS 2002家庭的横断面组件上随着时间的推移收集信息，这一目标得到了很好的实现，即2003年和2004年进行的阿尔巴尼亚面板调查（APS）。阿尔巴尼亚国民议会最近见证了2003年7月通过的决议，其中推动“国家结构和民间社会全面承诺，到2015年在阿尔巴尼亚实现千年发展目标（MDGs）”。通过国家报告监测实现MDGs的进展，这一报告涉及联合国与国家机构的紧密合作，由财政部社会和经济发展战略（NSSED）部门领导。此外，在导致贫困减少战略文件（PRSP；在阿尔巴尼亚也称为增长和贫困减少战略，GPRS）的过程中，阿尔巴尼亚政府加强了对加强自身收集和分析所需信息的能力的承诺，这些信息需要定期向政策制定者提供。在其第一阶段（2001-2006年），这一监控系统将包括以下数据收集工具：

(i) 人口和住房普查
(ii) 每3年一次的生活水平测量调查
(iii) 年度横断面调查。

在监控系统的这一第一阶段，重点是周期性的LSMS（2002年和2005年），随后是对LSMS家庭子样本的横断面调查（APS 2003、2004和2006年），这些调查大量借鉴了2001年的人口普查信息。我们的目标是参考LSMS来展示APS 2004数据的主要特征。调查工作由INSTAT的生活水平单位承担，由世界银行提供技术援助。

地理覆盖范围
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全国

分析单元
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家庭

数据类型
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样本调查数据 [ssd]

抽样程序
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(a) 样本设计

面板样本，包括LSMS 2002和2004年
APS 2004在户级收集了1,797个有效观察值和7,476个个人级观察值。面板的第二和第三波次样本是从LSMS 2002中选出的，以在全国范围内代表阿尔巴尼亚的家庭和个人。LSMS 2002与APS 2003和2004不同，因为它旨在在区域级（山区、中部、沿海和地拉那）以及城市和农村领域进行代表性设计，而后者仅针对最后两个领域（城市和农村）。LSMS 2002样本设计
LSMS基于抽样框中16个层的住房单位（HUs）的概率样本。它分为三个区域：沿海、中部和山区。此外，地拉那的城市地区也被视为一个单独的区域/层。这三个区域进一步细分为主要城市（该地区最重要的城市）、其他城市（该地区的其他城市）和农村。地拉那市及其郊区在样本设计中已被隐式分层，以提高样本设计的效率。每个层都根据2001年人口普查数据划分为统计区域（EA），每个初级抽样单位（PSU）根据EA中占用住房单位数量按比例选择。每个EA包括占用和未占用的住房单位。由于人口普查数据中登记的大量空置住宅，这里使用的是占用单位而不是总单位。住房单位，定义为被一个家庭占用的空间，被视为抽样单位，因为它比家庭更永久且更容易识别。每个主要城市（地拉那为75个）和每个农村地区（山区除外，为75个）都选择了10个EA。在每个EA中，系统地选择了8个家庭，以及4个可能的替代者。LSMS由450个EA组成，总样本量为3,600户。

(b) 分层

从LSMS中选出的面板样本旨在提供阿尔巴尼亚家庭和个人的全国代表性样本。它大约包括2002年LSMS家庭的一半，这些家庭在2003年和2004年都接受了访谈。与LSMS的做法相反，在山区没有进行过度抽样。样本设计旨在最小化家庭选择概率的变异性。它通过将样本分布与2001年人口普查数据得出的人口分布相匹配，确保了全国代表性。在表3中显示了2003-2004年APS的事前抽样方案。与LSMS设计相比，统计精度有所提高。在假设层人口方差相等的假设下，样本设计效应预计为1.02，而LSMS样本为1.28。此外，通过保持LSMS的所有450个EA在面板样本中，进一步提高了精度，从而减少了因新设计而产生的集群偏差。最后，面板调查有一些特殊特征，在数据使用时应予以考虑。样本设计旨在关注个人，这些个人在从原始家庭迁移到新家庭时也被追踪。这种可能性是家庭进入面板样本的唯一方式，如果它在第一波次（或对于APS 2004，第二波次）中尚未接受访谈。如果原始调查成员（OSM）迁移到新家庭，其旧家庭和新家庭及其成员都被包括在面板样本中。尽管迁移的OSM将出现在抽样家庭的名单上，但他/她仅在新家庭中是有效成员。在旧家庭中，他/她被视为“已迁移”，因此不是有效成员。这可能会引起一些混淆。第三波次中存在三种对个人进行分类的模式。首先，当他是OSM时，即在第一波次和第二波次都接受访谈的受访者。其次，当他/她是2002年的重新参与者时，即未在2003年（即由于暂时缺席）接受访谈的OSM，他/她在2004年返回。第三，当他/她是新成员时，无论他/她是原始家庭的出生婴儿、OSM加入的成员，还是与原始调查家庭共同居住的人。因此，APS是一个无限期的生命周期面板研究，不通过抽取新的样本单位进行替换。从第二波次开始，只有15岁及以上的个人被视为有效成员，因此有资格接受访谈。离开阿尔巴尼亚的个人不计入本调查年的有效样本，尽管他们仍然有资格在未来波次中接受访谈。

数据收集方式
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面对面 [f2f]

数据清理操作
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第一次数据清理在阿尔巴尼亚进行，由INSTAT与ISER和阿尔巴尼亚政府顾问合作实施。清理过程涉及以下活动：1. 定义数据检查程序和编写清理程序的语法代码；2. 为每个要检查的模块生成异常值和不一致列表，并与纸质问卷进行核对；在最初的几天里，数据清理操作员一直在处理数据录入程序的数据导出过程，以检查数据导出是否成功，并最终确定字典和错误信息的英文版本。由于“Agricultura2”文件转换问题和字典结构以检查导出数据的正确标签，对数据导出过程进行了一些更改。数据录入期间使用的字典是阿尔巴尼亚语。因此，对阿尔巴尼亚语和英语版本进行了准确比较，以确保（除标签外）两者之间的一致性。这项工作是通过使用名为“Winmerge”的免费软件完成的，该软件突出显示两个文本文件之间的所有差异。第二阶段致力于更新数据录入程序中的批量编辑（BE）程序，其中需要进行一些更正，以避免BE错误地发布的错误信息。之后，该程序被应用于检查所有错误，并运行一个Access程序将PSU和数据录入操作员代码与BE选择的每个问卷关联。一旦获得程序报告，INSTAT的四名工作人员开始检查所有报告的错误并进行必要的调整。在CSPRO软件中制作了所有原始数据的副本。在此过程中，报告了一些异常情况：有时检测到的错误或警告表明可能存在数据录入或调查员问题。对于这些情况，没有进行更正，并在报告中突出显示。大多数由BE报告的问题都涉及“看似与步行时间不一致的距离”和“每周工作时间超过70小时”。