LSE’s Ernestina Coast and UCL’s Sara Randall outline the importance of accuracy of data taken in international surveys to ensure poverty-related data are high quality

Coast, Ernestina

Randall, Sara

LSE Research Online

18/11/2014 Africa at LSE – Exploring the limits of household surveys in Africahttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2014/11/10/exploring-the-limits-of-household-surveys-in-africa/ 1/6ShareTweet76Exploring the limits of household surveys inAfricaLSE’s Ernestina Coast and UCL’s Sara Randall outlinethe importance of accuracy of data taken ininternational surveys to ensure poverty-related dataare high quality.Poverty statistics often depend on household-level measurements fromsurvey data, making the definition of household of critical importance.Many policy-makers, government agencies and researchers see povertyas fundamentally a household level problem. Thus, data for povertyanalyses need to be collected on households.We know that many African households are flexible, permeable, evolving,and differentiated along lines of gender and generation. Much of life inHome About LSE Experts Video and audio Events Activities StudyBlog roll Search ...Join our mailing listemail addressSubscribe  Recent Posts Ten Things thatAnthropologists CanDo to Fight the WestAfrican EbolaEpidemic Agriculturalinnovation transformsdrought-prone Kenyanregion18/11/2014 Africa at LSE – Exploring the limits of household surveys in Africahttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2014/11/10/exploring-the-limits-of-household-surveys-in-africa/ 2/6Africa remains inherently unpredictable and valuable counteractions topoverty depend on strategies focusing on building networks ofobligations and support; these are difficult to capture using householdsurveys. The more anthropological and qualitative the research, the morelikely it is that the researchers explain what they understand byhousehold and use locally grounded definitions of household. Suchresearch however rarely feeds into national indicators and quantitativeanalyses using nationally representative survey data rarely explicitlyconsider the nature of the “households” they are studying, especiallywhen doing secondary analyses of survey data sets.Our research, conducted in Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Uganda and SouthAfrica, reflects on what sorts of poverty-related issues may be missed orinaccurately represented because of the ways “household” andhousehold membership is defined in surveys. A key constraint is thatmost surveys require individuals to be enumerated as members of onehousehold and one household only, whereas the reality in much of urbanand rural Africa is that individuals have affiliations, links, relationshipsand draw or contribute resources with two or more households. Wedevelop an analytic framework of “open” and “closed” households.“Open” households cope with poverty using flexibility, movement andextra-household networks, but both household membership andaffiliations and their strategies to counter or insure against poverty arepoorly represented by survey data. Closed households where householdmembers do not have flexible links with other households, and exchangefew people, resources or support are likely to be better described bysurvey data. Closed households often encompass the very poor becausethey are not part of larger networks of exchanges, movement andsupport. Closed households though are not necessarily poor; they mayalso include some of the emerging middle classes, although these werenot the subject of this research.Survey definitions of a household often refer to those who eat togetherassuming that this indicates an economic unit of consumption. However,eating together is often more a consequence of practicality or cookingtraditions rather than an indication of a basic economic unit.Furthermore it can be practically difficult to identify who does eattogether and urban poverty often entails eating street food rather thancooking.The idea of “open households” should not be seen as a new definition Best of theBlogosphere: BurkinaFaso and the Fall ofBlaise Compaore Book Review: AIDSDoesn’t Show Its Face:Inequality, Morality,and Social Change inNigeria by DanielJordan Smith The fall of BurkinaFaso’s “strongman”could signal a newdawn for Africa’syouthSee all of our blog postsCategories African Cities (26) Agriculture (7) Arts/CreativeIndustries (7) Book Review (62) Business (7) Climate Change andthe Environment (13) Conflict (121)18/11/2014 Africa at LSE – Exploring the limits of household surveys in Africahttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2014/11/10/exploring-the-limits-of-household-surveys-in-africa/ 3/6and a burdensome tool to add to the complexities of data collection inAfrican surveys. The challenge is to develop simple additional questionswhich could be added to surveys which would allow openness (or somedimensions of it) to be identified and explored in flexible ways, whileretaining comparability. Our data collection experience suggests thisshould not be too challenging. Openness does not constitute “anyone”who contributes or benefits but is about individuals who are generallyperceived to have some claim to membership.There are two ways forward from our research. It is probably unrealisticto expect large international surveys to change their definitions and waysof recording households. However we can expect analysts of such data toarticulate much more clearly in their analyses and publications thelimitations of the definitions used in data collection and to reflect on theimplications of these limitations – and in particular the validity of theiranalyses. More triangulation with work produced by other disciplines onstudy populations would be a step forward as would a frank reflection onthe biases generated by specific approaches and data. Surveys that arenot constrained by being part of international comparative series couldexperiment with different approaches to recording householdmembership, allowing multiple and diverse types of membership andwider definitions of household. This would allow a differentiation ofclosed and open households and an exploration of the implications ofdifferent degrees of openness via the economic measures being used.Quantitative data that truly reflect diverse strategies for confronting andmanaging poverty are probably unachievable – and we may have toaccept that some things are real and important but ultimatelyunmeasurable.Visit the Household survey project website.This post is based on research papers, Poverty in Africanhouseholds: the limits of survey representations by Sara Randall andErnestina Coast and From design to practice: how can large-scalehousehold surveys better represent the complexities of the socialunits under investigation by Antoinette Kriel, Sara Randall,Ernestina Coast and Bernadene de Clerq.  Development (64) Ebola Outbreak inWest Africa (9) Economics (35) Education (16) Featured (11) Finance (7) Gender (25) Great War in Africa(11) Health (46) History (34) Human Rights (23) Industry (2) International Affairs(168) LSE (55) Media (12) Migration (12) Religion (10) Resources (14) Security (7)18/11/2014 Africa at LSE – Exploring the limits of household surveys in Africahttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2014/11/10/exploring-the-limits-of-household-surveys-in-africa/ 4/6November 10th, 2014 | Featured, Society | 1 CommentOne CommentLeave A CommentName (required) Email (required) Website Previous postShare this:Facebook 41 Twitter 76 LinkedIn 1 Reddit TumblrGoogle Pinterest Press This Email PrintStumbleUpon PocketNext post AFSUN – The African Food Security Network  November 17, 2014 at 1:46 pm -Reply[…] http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2014/11/10/exploring-the-limits-of-household-surveys-in-africa/ […]         RelatedThe power of theinterviewerEducation canreverse South Africa’sinequality, accordingto UCT Vice-ChancellorDisabled people inAfrica have beenmarginalised for toolongIn "Education"In "LSE"In "Development" Society (30)TagsAfrica  Africa and World WarOneAfrican Union  aid  Algeria  Angola  apartheid  Arab Spring  Boko Haram  China-Africa  David Livingstone  democracy  development  DR Congo  Ebola outbreak inWest Africaeconomic growth  Egypt  elections  Ethiopia  France  genocide  Ghana  Great War in Africa  HIV/AIDS  IA  Kenya  LSE  LSE Africa Summit  Malawi  Mali  Nelson Mandela  18/11/2014 Africa at LSE – Exploring the limits of household surveys in Africahttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2014/11/10/exploring-the-limits-of-household-surveys-in-africa/ 5/6Comment...POST COMMENT Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email.Nigeria  NM  Rwanda  Sierra Leone  Somalia  South Africa  South Sudan  Sudan  Tanzania  Thandika MkandawireUganda  World Bank  Zambia  ZimbabweAfrica at LSE is partof LSE’s AfricanInitiativeSupported byAfrica at LSE ArchiveSelect Month18/11/2014 Africa at LSE – Exploring the limits of household surveys in Africahttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2014/11/10/exploring-the-limits-of-household-surveys-in-africa/ 6/6 LATEST LSERESEARCH ON AFRICAIndividual experience ofpositive and negativegrowth is asymmetric:evidence from subjectivewell-being dataNovember 4, 2014Can local communities'sustain' HIV/AIDSprogrammes? 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Exploring the limits of household surveys in Africa

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