Expenditure and Consumption Survey, PECS 1998 - 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 target population in the sample survey comprises all private household living in the West Bank and Gaza Srip, excluding nomads and students. Analysis unit --------------------------- 1- Household/family. 2- Individual/person. Universe --------------------------- The survey covered a national sample of households and all permanently residing individuals in surveyed households. 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 target population in the survey sample comprises all households living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, excluding nomads and students. The sample design is a stratified two-stage design for households selected to be interviewed. At the first stage a sample of cells (PSUs) was selected from PCBS master sample frame. At the second stage, a sample of households was selected after a complete household listing of the sampled cells. Sample design: ========= Four levels of stratification have been made: 1. Stratification by District. 2. Stratification by place of residence, which comprises: (a) Municipalities (b) Villages (C) refugees camps 3. Stratification by locality size 4. Stratification by cell identification in that order Target cluster size: ============ The target cluster size or "sample-take" is the average number of households to be selected per PSU. In this survey, the sample take is around 10 households. Sample size: ======== The total sample size collected, after excluding non-response and related losses, is 2851 households. Detailed information/formulas on the sampling design are available in the user manual. Sampling deviation --------------------------- The standard errors for the main survey estimates were calculated to give the user an idea of their reliability or precision. Whereas, the variance was calculated using the method of ultimate clusters within any domain of estimation. Detailed information on the sampling design deviation and calculation of the variance is available in the user manual. Mode of data collection --------------------------- Face-to-face [f2f] Research instrument --------------------------- The PECS questionnaire consists of two main sections: First section: Certain articles / provisions of the form filled at the beginning of the month,and the remainder filled out at the end of the month. The questionnaire includes the following provisions: Cover sheet: It contains detailed and particulars of the family, date of visit, particular of the field/office work team, number/sex of the family members. Statement of the family members: Contains social, economic and demographic particulars of the selected family. Statement of the long-lasting commodities and income generation activities: Includes a number of basic and indispensable items (i.e, Livestock, or agricultural lands). Housing Characteristics: Includes information and data pertaining to the housing conditions, including type of shelter, number of rooms, ownership, rent, water, electricity supply, connection to the sewer system, source of cooking and heating fuel, and remoteness/proximity of the house to education and health facilities. Monthly and Annual Income: Data pertaining to the income of the family is collected from different sources at the end of the registration / recording period. Second section: The second section of the questionnaire includes a list of 54 consumption and expenditure groups itemized and serially numbered according to its importance to the family. Each of these groups contains important commodities. The number of commodities items in each for all groups stood at 707 commodities and services items. Groups 1-21 include food, drink, and cigarettes. Group 22 includes homemade commodities. Groups 23-45 include all items except for food, drink and cigarettes. Groups 50-54 include all of the long-lasting commodities. Data on each of these groups was collected over different intervals of time so as to reflect expenditure over a period of one full year. Cleaning operations --------------------------- Raw Data ======= 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.