In 1992, Bosnia-Herzegovina, one of the six republics in former Yugoslavia, became an independent nation. A civil war started soon thereafter, lasting until 1995 and causing widespread destruction and losses of lives. Following the Dayton accord, BosniaHerzegovina (BiH) emerged as an independent state comprised of two entities, namely, the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (FBiH) and the Republika Srpska (RS), and the district of Brcko. In addition to the destruction caused to the physical infrastructure, there was considerable social disruption and decline in living standards for a large section of the population. Along side these events, a period of economic transition to a market economy was occurring. The distributive impacts of this transition, both positive and negative, are unknown. In short, while it is clear that welfare levels have changed, there is very little information on poverty and social indicators on which to base policies and programs. In the post-war process of rebuilding the economic and social base of the country, the government has faced the problems created by having little relevant data at the household level. The three statistical organizations in the country (State Agency for Statistics for BiH –BHAS, the RS Institute of Statistics-RSIS, and the FBiH Institute of Statistics-FIS) have been active in working to improve the data available to policy makers: both at the macro and the household level. One facet of their activities is to design and implement a series of household series. The first of these surveys is the Living Standards Measurement Study survey (LSMS). Later surveys will include the Household Budget Survey (an Income and Expenditure Survey) and a Labor Force Survey. A subset of the LSMS households will be re-interviewed in the two years following the LSMS to create a panel data set. The three statistical organizations began work on the design of the Living Standards Measurement Study Survey (LSMS) in 1999. The purpose of the survey was to collect data needed for assessing the living standards of the population and for providing the key indicators needed for social and economic policy formulation. The survey was to provide data at the country and the entity level and to allow valid comparisons between entities to be made. The LSMS survey was carried out in the Fall of 2001 by the three statistical organizations with financial and technical support from the Department for International Development of the British Government (DfID), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the Japanese Government, and the World Bank (WB). The creation of a Master Sample for the survey was supported by the Swedish Government through SIDA, the European Commission, the Department for International Development of the British Government and the World Bank. The overall management of the project was carried out by the Steering Board, comprised of the Directors of the RS and FBiH Statistical Institutes, the Management Board of the State Agency for Statistics and representatives from DfID, UNDP and the WB. The day-to-day project activities were carried out by the Survey Mangement Team, made up of two professionals from each of the three statistical organizations. The Living Standard Measurement Survey LSMS, in addition to collecting the information necessary to obtain a comprehensive as possible measure of the basic dimensions of household living standards, has three basic objectives, as follows: 1. To provide the public sector, government, the business community, scientific institutions, international donor organizations and social organizations with information on different indicators of the population’s living conditions, as well as on available resources for satisfying basic needs. 2. To provide information for the evaluation of the results of different forms of government policy and programs developed with the aim to improve the population’s living standard. The survey will enable the analysis of the relations between and among different aspects of living standards (housing, consumption, education, health, labor) at a given time, as well as within a household. 3. To provide key contributions for development of government’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, based on analyzed data.

Abstract

In 1992, Bosnia-Herzegovina, one of the six republics in former Yugoslavia, became an independent nation. A civil war started soon thereafter, lasting until 1995 and causing widespread destruction and losses of lives. Following the Dayton accord, BosniaHerzegovina (BiH) emerged as an independent state comprised of two entities, namely, the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (FBiH) and the Republika Srpska (RS), and the district of Brcko. In addition to the destruction caused to the physical infrastructure, there was considerable social disruption and decline in living standards for a large section of the population. Along side these events, a period of economic transition to a market economy was occurring. The distributive impacts of this transition, both positive and negative, are unknown. In short, while it is clear that welfare levels have changed, there is very little information on poverty and social indicators on which to base policies and programs.

In the post-war process of rebuilding the economic and social base of the country, the government has faced the problems created by having little relevant data at the household level. The three statistical organizations in the country (State Agency for Statistics for BiH –BHAS, the RS Institute of Statistics-RSIS, and the FBiH Institute of Statistics-FIS) have been active in working to improve the data available to policy makers: both at the macro and the household level. One facet of their activities is to design and implement a series of household series. The first of these surveys is the Living Standards Measurement Study survey (LSMS). Later surveys will include the Household Budget Survey (an Income and Expenditure Survey) and a Labor Force Survey. A subset of the LSMS households will be re-interviewed in the two years following the LSMS to create a panel data set.

The three statistical organizations began work on the design of the Living Standards Measurement Study Survey (LSMS) in 1999. The purpose of the survey was to collect data needed for assessing the living standards of the population and for providing the key indicators needed for social and economic policy formulation. The survey was to provide data at the country and the entity level and to allow valid comparisons between entities to be made.

The LSMS survey was carried out in the Fall of 2001 by the three statistical organizations with financial and technical support from the Department for International Development of the British Government (DfID), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the Japanese Government, and the World Bank (WB). The creation of a Master Sample for the survey was supported by the Swedish Government through SIDA, the European Commission, the Department for International Development of the British Government and the World Bank.

The overall management of the project was carried out by the Steering Board, comprised of the Directors of the RS and FBiH Statistical Institutes, the Management Board of the State Agency for Statistics and representatives from DfID, UNDP and the WB. The day-to-day project activities were carried out by the Survey Mangement Team, made up of two professionals from each of the three statistical organizations.

The Living Standard Measurement Survey LSMS, in addition to collecting the information necessary to obtain a comprehensive as possible measure of the basic dimensions of household living standards, has three basic objectives, as follows:

1. To provide the public sector, government, the business community, scientific institutions, international donor organizations and social organizations with information on different indicators of the population’s living conditions, as well as on available resources for satisfying basic needs.

2. To provide information for the evaluation of the results of different forms of government policy and programs developed with the aim to improve the population’s living standard. The survey will enable the analysis of the relations between and among different aspects of living standards (housing, consumption, education, health, labor) at a given time, as well as within a household.

3. To provide key contributions for development of government’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, based on analyzed data.

Geographic coverage

National coverage. Domains: Urban/rural/mixed; Federation; Republic

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

A total sample of 5,400 households was determined to be adequate for the needs of the survey: with 2,400 in the Republika Srpska and 3,000 in the Federation of BiH. The difficulty was in selecting a probability sample that would be representative of the country's population. The sample design for any survey depends upon the availability of information on the universe of households and individuals in the country. Usually this comes from a census or administrative records. In the case of BiH the most recent census was done in 1991. The data from this census were rendered obsolete due to both the simple passage of time but, more importantly, due to the massive population displacements that occurred during the war.

At the initial stages of this project it was decided that a master sample should be constructed. Experts from Statistics Sweden developed the plan for the master sample and provided the procedures for its construction. From this master sample, the households for the LSMS were selected.

Master Sample [This section is based on Peter Lynn's note "LSMS Sample Design and Weighting - Summary". April, 2002. Essex University, commissioned by DfID.]

The master sample is based on a selection of municipalities and a full enumeration of the selected municipalities. Optimally, one would prefer smaller units (geographic or administrative) than municipalities. However, while it was considered that the population estimates of municipalities were reasonably accurate, this was not the case for smaller geographic or administrative areas. To avoid the error involved in sampling smaller areas with very uncertain population estimates, municipalities were used as the base unit for the master sample.

The Statistics Sweden team proposed two options based on this same method, with the only difference being in the number of municipalities included and enumerated. For reasons of funding, the smaller option proposed by the team was used, or Option B.

Stratification of Municipalities

The first step in creating the Master Sample was to group the 146 municipalities in the country into three strata- Urban, Rural and Mixed - within each of the two entities. Urban municipalities are those where 65 percent or more of the households are considered to be urban, and rural municipalities are those where the proportion of urban households is below 35 percent. The remaining municipalities were classified as Mixed (Urban and Rural) Municipalities. Brcko was excluded from the sampling frame.

Urban, Rural and Mixed Municipalities: It is worth noting that the urban-rural definitions used in BiH are unusual with such large administrative units as municipalities classified as if they were completely homogeneous. Their classification into urban, rural, mixed comes from the 1991 Census which used the predominant type of income of households in the municipality to define the municipality. This definition is imperfect in two ways. First, the distribution of income sources may have changed dramatically from the pre-war times: populations have shifted, large industries have closed and much agricultural land remains unusable due to the presence of land mines. Second, the definition is not comparable to other countries' where villages, towns and cities are classified by population size into rural or urban or by types of services and infrastructure available. Clearly, the types of communities within a municipality vary substantially in terms of both population and infrastructure.

However, these imperfections are not detrimental to the sample design (the urban/rural definition may not be very useful for analysis purposes, but that is a separate issue). [Note: It may be noted that the percent of LSMS households in each stratum reporting using agricultural land or having livestock is highest in the "rural" municipalities and lowest in the "urban" municipalities. However, the concentration of agricultural households is higher in RS, so the municipality types are not comparable across entities. The percent reporting no land or livestock in RS was 74.7% in "urban" municipalities, 43.4% in "mixed" municipalities and 31.2% in "rural" municipalities. Respective figures for FbiH were 88.7%, 60.4% and 40.0%.]

The classification is used simply for stratification. The stratification is likely to have some small impact on the variance of survey estimates, but it does not introduce any bias.

Selection of Municipalities

Option B of the Master Sample involved sampling municipalities independently from each of the six strata described in the previous section. Municipalities were selected with probability proportional to estimated population size (PPES) within each stratum, so as to select approximately 50% of the mostly urban municipalities, 20% of the mixed and 10% of the mostly rural ones. Overall, 25 municipalities were selected (out of 146) with 14 in the FbiH and 11 in the RS. The distribution of selected municipalities over the sampling strata is shown below.

Stratum / Total municipalities Mi / Sampled municipalities mi 1. Federation, mostly urban / 10 / 5 2. Federation, mostly mixed / 26 / 4 3. Federation, mostly rural / 48 / 5 4. RS, mostly urban /4 / 2 5. RS, mostly mixed /29 / 5 6. RS, mostly rural / 29 / 4

Note: Mi is the total number of municipalities in stratum i (i=1, … , 6); mi is the number of municipalities selected from stratum

Abstract

In 1992, Bosnia-Herzegovina, one of the six republics in former Yugoslavia, became an independent nation. A civil war started soon thereafter, lasting until 1995 and causing widespread destruction and losses of lives. Following the Dayton accord, BosniaHerzegovina (BiH) emerged as an independent state comprised of two entities, namely, the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (FBiH) and the Republika Srpska (RS), and the district of Brcko. In addition to the destruction caused to the physical infrastructure, there was considerable social disruption and decline in living standards for a large section of the population. Alongside these events, a period of economic transition to a market economy was occurring. The distributive impacts of this transition, both positive and negative, are unknown. In short, while it is clear that welfare levels have changed, there is very little information on poverty and social indicators on which to base policies and programs. In the post-war process of rebuilding the economic and social base of the country, the government has faced the problems created by having little relevant data at the household level. The three statistical organizations in the country (State Agency for Statistics for BiH -BHAS, the RS Institute of Statistics-RSIS, and the FBiH Institute of Statistics-FIS) have been active in working to improve the data available to policy makers: both at the macro and the household level. One facet of their activities is to design and implement a series of household series. The first of these surveys is the Living Standards Measurement Study survey (LSMS). Later surveys will include the Household Budget Survey (an Income and Expenditure Survey) and a Labour Force Survey. A subset of the LSMS households will be re-interviewed in the two years following the LSMS to create a panel data set.

The three statistical organizations began work on the design of the Living Standards Measurement Study Survey (LSMS) in 1999. The purpose of the survey was to collect data needed for assessing the living standards of the population and for providing the key indicators needed for social and economic policy formulation. The survey was to provide data at the country and the entity level and to allow valid comparisons between entities to be made. The LSMS survey was carried out in the Fall of 2001 by the three statistical organizations with financial and technical support from the Department for International Development of the British Government (DfID), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the Japanese Government, and the World Bank (WB). The creation of a Master Sample for the survey was supported by the Swedish Government through SIDA, the European Commission, the Department for International Development of the British Government and the World Bank. The overall management of the project was carried out by the Steering Board, comprised of the Directors of the RS and FBiH Statistical Institutes, the Management Board of the State Agency for Statistics and representatives from DfID, UNDP and the WB. The day-to-day project activities were carried out by the Survey Management Team, made up of two professionals from each of the three statistical organizations. The Living Standard Measurement Survey LSMS, in addition to collecting the information necessary to obtain a comprehensive as possible measure of the basic dimensions of household living standards, has three basic objectives, as follows: 1. To provide the public sector, government, the business community, scientific institutions, international donor organizations and social organizations with information on different indicators of the population's living conditions, as well as on available resources for satisfying basic needs. 2. To provide information for the evaluation of the results of different forms of government policy and programs developed with the aim to improve the population's living standard. The survey will enable the analysis of the relations between and among different aspects of living standards (housing, consumption, education, health, labour) at a given time, as well as within a household. 3. To provide key contributions for development of government's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, based on analysed data.

Geographic coverage

National coverage

Analysis unit

Households

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

(a) SAMPLE SIZE A total sample of 5,400 households was determined to be adequate for the needs of the survey: with 2,400 in the Republika Srpska and 3,000 in the Federation of BiH. The difficulty was in selecting a probability sample that would be representative of the country's population. The sample design for any survey depends upon the availability of information on the universe of households and individuals in the country. Usually this comes from a census or administrative records. In the case of BiH the most recent census was done in 1991. The data from this census were rendered obsolete due to both the simple passage of time but, more importantly, due to the massive population displacements that occurred during the war. At the initial stages of this project it was decided that a master sample should be constructed. Experts from Statistics Sweden developed the plan for the master sample and provided the procedures for its construction. From this master sample, the households for the LSMS were selected. Master Sample [This section is based on Peter Lynn's note "LSMS Sample Design and Weighting - Summary". April, 2002. Essex University, commissioned by DfID.] The master sample is based on a selection of municipalities and a full enumeration of the selected municipalities. Optimally, one would prefer smaller units (geographic or administrative) than municipalities. However, while it was considered that the population estimates of municipalities were reasonably accurate, this was not the case for smaller geographic or administrative areas. To avoid the error involved in sampling smaller areas with very uncertain population estimates, municipalities were used as the base unit for the master sample. The Statistics Sweden team proposed two options based on this same method, with the only difference being in the number of municipalities included and enumerated.

(b) SAMPLE DESIGN For reasons of funding, the smaller option proposed by the team was used, or Option B. Stratification of Municipalities The first step in creating the Master Sample was to group the 146 municipalities in the country into three strata- Urban, Rural and Mixed - within each of the two entities. Urban municipalities are those where 65 percent or more of the households are considered to be urban, and rural municipalities are those where the proportion of urban households is below 35 percent. The remaining municipalities were classified as Mixed (Urban and Rural) Municipalities. Brcko was excluded from the sampling frame. Urban, Rural and Mixed Municipalities: It is worth noting that the urban-rural definitions used in BiH are unusual with such large administrative units as municipalities classified as if they were completely homogeneous. Their classification into urban, rural, mixed comes from the 1991 Census which used the predominant type of income of households in the municipality to define the municipality. This definition is imperfect in two ways. First, the distribution of income sources may have changed dramatically from the pre-war times: populations have shifted, large industries have closed, and much agricultural land remains unusable due to the presence of land mines. Second, the definition is not comparable to other countries' where villages, towns and cities are classified by population size into rural or urban or by types of services and infrastructure available. Clearly, the types of communities within a municipality vary substantially in terms of both population and infrastructure. However, these imperfections are not detrimental to the sample design (the urban/rural definition may not be very useful for analysis purposes, but that is a separate issue).

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Cleaning operations

(a) DATA ENTRY

An integrated approach to data entry and fieldwork was adopted in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Data entry proceeded side by side with data gathering to ensure verification and correction in the field. Data entry stations were located in the regional offices of the entity institutes and were equipped with computers, modem and a dedicated telephone line. The completed questionnaires were delivered to these stations each day for data entry. Twenty data entry operators (10 from Federation and 10 from RS) were trained in two training sessions held for a week each in Sarajevo and Banja Luka. The trainers were the staff of the two entity institutes who had undergone training in the CSPro software earlier and had participated in the workshops of the Pilot survey. Prior to the training, laptop computers were provided to the entity institutes, and the CSPro software was installed in them. The training for the data entry operators covered the following elements:

• Introduction to the LSMS Survey questionnaire; Introduction to the personal computers/ lap top computers; Copying data on diskette and printing of output
• The Data entry programme (CSPro). Understanding of the Round 1 data entry screens (Modules 1-10)
• Practice of Round 1 (data entry trainees enter questionnaires completed by interviewer trainees during practice interviews)
• Understanding of Round 2 Data entry screen (Modules 11-13)
• Practice of Round 2 Data entry screens (data entry trainees entered the questionnaires completed by interviewer trainees)
• Control Procedures; Copying