BRIGHT Integrated Household Survey of Sri Lanka, 2024-2025

The BRIGHT Multi-Thematic Household Survey of Sri Lanka 2025 is the first nationally representative, multi-thematic household survey implemented in Sri Lanka. The survey was conducted as part of the Building Resilient and Inclusive Growth and Holistic Transformation (BRIGHT) project under the CGIAR Research Initiative on Poverty Reduction, Livelihoods, and Jobs, led by IFPRI. The survey was designed to generate urgently needed evidence on the socioeconomic consequences of Sri Lanka’s 2022–2023 economic crisis and to inform policy options for economic recovery, improved livelihoods, and strengthened resilience. Data were collected from male and female members of 6,850 households across all provinces and districts of Sri Lanka between November 2024 and March 2025. The BRIGHT survey is representative of urban, rural, and estate populations, as well as each of the country’s nine provinces and 25 districts. National and subnational representativeness was achieved through a three-stage cluster sampling design and the construction of household-level survey weights using detailed subnational population data from the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) of Sri Lanka. The survey covers household food and non-food expenditure, monetary poverty, education, health, housing, assets, employment and livelihoods, farm and non-farm businesses, women’s empowerment, psychological wellbeing, nutrition knowledge and anthropometry, social protection, food, water and energy insecurity, debt, migration, climate change adaptation, and exposure to shocks, among other topics. By integrating these topics into a single nationally representative dataset, the survey provides a comprehensive and rich source of information to investigate a wide range of welfare indicators. The survey is also highly innovative, as it incorporates newly developed modules on nutrition knowledge, water and energy security, and food consumption, and a number of survey experiments around gender-specific newly designed modules on farming, fishing, and livestock practices