Abstract

The level and distribution of poverty in Ethiopia is extensive. According to the results obtained from the 1995/96 and the 1999/2000 Household Income, Consumption and Expenditure Survey and Welfare Monitoring Survey of the Central Statistical Authority (CSA), about 44 percent of the total populations (45 percent in rural areas and 37 percent in urban areas) are found to be below poverty line. The country together with development partners, as a result, has put poverty reduction strategies high on the agenda and working firmly on the implementation program since the beginning of this decade. With firm dedication to reduce poverty, the government has prepared its poverty reduction program entitled “Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Program” in 2002. The strategy has been implemented over the past three years.

In light of the plan to reduce poverty over time, strong system of monitoring and evaluation has been put in place. Consequently, the issue of welfare monitoring in Ethiopia arose as part of the Economic Reform Program (ERP). The ERP specifically and strongly underlies to see the effects of the reform program on poverty and building the analytical capacity of the government to monitor and evaluate such effects. To this end, the government has established a Welfare Monitoring System in 1995 to oversight the following major activities: - establish an information system that provides a continuous picture of the poverty scenario in the country; - indicate the impact of reform programs on the level of household welfare; - establish follow-up procedures on the various programs and activities targeted towards poverty reduction; and - conduct regular statistical surveys to assess, in particular, the efficiency of targeted programs.

The CSA and WMU of Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (MoFED) has been the key actors in the M&E system in place by way of producing, analyzing and disseminating poverty related data and results. The program has been supported by the World Bank IDA Credit and the Norwegian Trust Fund.

In line with strengthening the established M&E system of the government, the CSA and WMU of MoFED had also submitted a financing requirement proposal (entitled: Strengthening Data Collection, Analysis and Dissemination on Poverty Monitoring and the MDGs) to the Development Assistant Group (DAG). Following the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between MoFED, CSA and the donors, various implementation activities have also been carried out.

In order to meet the data needs of the Welfare Monitoring System, the CSA has been conducting the two surveys that provide poverty related data: Household Income, Consumption and Expenditure Survey (HICES) and Welfare Monitoring Survey (WMS) since 1995/96. The HICE and WMS surveys provide crucially useful information for the designing and monitoring and evaluation of the country’s poverty reduction strategy: Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Program (SDPRP), the various socioeconomic policies and programs and hence monitor the progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The two surveys are inseparable and provide basic data that reflect the standard of living of households, individuals and the society as a whole.

The WMS focuses on wider range of socioeconomic indicators that reflect the nonincome dimensions of poverty. The 2004 survey have been improved to accommodate users needs as much as possible. New features in the current survey include shocks and coping mechanisms, HIV/AIDS related information, estimates of orphan and foster children, major prevailing diseases, plot size and other additional variables.

The main objectives of the WMS are to provide data that enable understand the nonincome aspects of poverty and has the following objectives: - to assess the level, extent and distribution of non-income poverty; - helps assess the quality of life of households/individuals; - to provide basic data that enables design, monitor and evaluate the impact of socioeconomic policies and programs on households/individuals living standard; - provide basic indicators on households’ and individuals’ living standard with respect to basic needs including: -> Education, Health, Child nutrition and care, Access to and utilization of basic facilities, Housing and housing amenities (drinking water, sanitation, energy, etc.), Household assets, Selected indicators of living standard, Vulnerability (Shocks and coping mechanisms, Food security, etc.), and HIV/AIDS and basic population characteristics.

Geographic coverage

The year 2004 Welfare Monitoring Survey covered all rural and urban area of the country except the non-sedentary areas in Afar and Somali Regional States. Excluded are three zones of Afar Region, six zones of Somali Region and all zones of Gambella Region.

Analysis unit

• Households
• Individuals (including adult women aged 15 and above, children aged 5 and below)

Universe

The survey covered households in the selected samples except residents of collective quarters, homeless persons and foreigners.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

Sampling Frame The list of all households obtained from the 2001/02 Ethiopian Agricultural Sample Enumeration (EASE) is used as a frame to select the sample EAs in the rural areas of the country. In urban areas, on the other hand, the frame, consisting of households by EA obtained from the 2004 Ethiopian Urban Economic Establishment Census (EUEEC), is used to select sample sites for the 2004 welfare monitoring survey. The frame from which sample households were selected was based on a fresh list of households taken at the beginning of the survey period in each of the selected urban and rural EAs.

Sample Design For the purpose of the survey the country was divided into three broad categories including rural category, major urban centers category and other urban centers category.

Category I - Rural: This category consists of the rural areas of 58 zones and special Weredas, which are considered as zones, in 7 regions of the country. Harari region and Addis Ababa City Counsil and Dire Dawa City council were treated independently. Each zone/special Wereda of a region was considered to be a survey domain (i.e. reporting level) for which the major findings of the survey are reported. Rural Harari, Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa each were considered as separate reporting levels.

Category I totally comprises 61 reporting levels. A stratified two-stage cluster sample design in which the primary sampling units (PSUs) were EAs was used to select samples. Twelve households per sample EA were selected as a second Stage Sampling Unit (SSU) to which survey questionnaire finally were administered to the members of sample households.

Category II - Major urban centers: In this category all regional capitals (except Gambella region) and four other major urban centers that have relatively larger population sizes were included. Each of the 14 urban center in this category is taken us a reporting level. Since there is a high variation in the standards of living of the residents of these urban centers (that may have a significant impact on the final results of the survey), each urban center was further stratified into the following three sub-strata.

Sub-stratum 1: Households having a relatively high standard of living Sub-stratum 2: Households having a relatively medium standard of living Sub-stratum 3: Households having a relatively low standard of living

In this category too, a stratified two-stage cluster sample design was adopted to select the primary sampling units (the EAs) and the Second Stage Unit. Allocation of sample EAs to a reporting level among the above mentioned strata were accomplished in proportion to the number of EAs in each stratum. Sixteen households from each of the primary sampling units (EAs) in each reporting level were then selected as a Second Stage Unit (SSU).

Category III - Other urban centers: Urban centers in the country other than those under category II were grouped under this category. A domain of other urban centers is formed for each region (excluding Gambella region) and seven reporting levels were formed in this category. However, there is no domain in category III for Harari, Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa as they do not have urban centers other than those grouped under category II.

Unlike the above two categories, a stratified three stage cluster sample design was adopted to select samples from this category. The primary sampling units were urban centers and the second stage sampling units were EAs. Sixteen households from each of the selected EAs were finally selected as a third stage sampling unit.

Sample Size and Selection Scheme Category I: A totally of 2,016 EAs and 24,192 households were selected from this category. Sample EAs of each reporting level were selected using Probability Proportional to Size (PPS) with systematic sampling techniques; size being number of household obtained from the 2001/2 Ethiopian Agricultural Sample Enumeration. Twelve households per EA were systematically selected from the fresh list of households prepared at the beginning of the survey.

Category II: In this category 485 EAs and 7,760 households were selected. Sample EAs from each reporting level in this category were also selected using probability proportional to size systematic sampling; size being number of households obtained from the 2004 EUEEC. Sixteen households in each of the selected EAs were systematically selected from the fresh list of households prepared at the beginning of the survey.

Category III: One hundred twenty-seven urban centers, 275 EAs and 4,400 households were selected in this category. Urban

Abstract

The Ethiopia Socioeconomic Panel Survey (ESPS) is a collaborative project between the Ethiopian Statistical Service (ESS) and the World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) team. The objective of the LSMS-ISA is to collect multi-topic, household-level panel data with a special focus on improving agriculture statistics and generating a clearer understanding of the link between agriculture and other sectors of the economy. The project also aims to build capacity, share knowledge across countries, and improve survey methodologies and technology. ESPS is a long-term project to collect panel data. The project responds to the data needs of the country, given the dependence of a high percentage of households on agriculture activities in the country. The ESPS collects information on household agricultural activities along with other information on the households like human capital, other economic activities, and access to services and resources. The ability to follow the same households over time makes the ESPS a new and powerful tool for studying and understanding the role of agriculture in household welfare over time as it allows analyses of how households add to their human and physical capital, how education affects earnings, and the role of government policies and programs on poverty, inter alia. The ESPS is the first-panel survey to be carried out by the Ethiopian Statistical Service that links a multi-topic household questionnaire with detailed data on agriculture.

Geographic coverage

National Regional Urban and Rural

Analysis unit

• Household
• Individual
• Community

Universe

The survey covered all de jure households excluding prisons, hospitals, military barracks, and school dormitories.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

The sampling frame for the second phase ESPS panel survey is based on the updated 2018 pre-census cartographic database of enumeration areas by the Ethiopian Statistical Service (ESS). The sample is a two-stage stratified probability sample. The ESPS EAs in rural areas are the subsample of the AgSS EA sample. That means the first stage of sampling in the rural areas entailed selecting enumeration areas (i.e., the primary sampling units) using simple random sampling (SRS) from the sample of the 2018 AgSS enumeration areas (EAs). The first stage of sampling for urban areas is selecting EAs directly from the urban frame of EAs within each region using systematic PPS. This is designed to automatically result in a proportional allocation of the urban sample by zone within each region. Following the selection of sample EAs, they are allocated by urban rural strata using power allocation which is happened to be closer to proportional allocation.

The second stage of sampling is the selection of households to be surveyed in each sampled EA using systematic random sampling. From the rural EAs, 10 agricultural households are selected as a subsample of the households selected for the AgSS, and 2 non-agricultural households are selected from the non-agriculture households list in that specific EA. The non-agriculture household selection follows the same sampling method i.e., systematic random sampling. One important issue to note in ESPS sampling is that the total number of agriculture households per EA remains at 10 even though there are less than 2 or no non-agriculture households are listed and sampled in that EA. For urban areas, a total of 15 households are selected per EA regardless of the households’ economic activity. The households are selected using systematic random sampling from the total households listed in that specific EA.

The ESPS-5 kept all the ESPS-4 samples except for those in the Tigray region and a few other places. A more detailed description of the sample design is provided in Section 3 of the Basic Information Document provided under the Related Materials tab.

Mode of data collection

Computer Assisted Personal Interview [capi]

Research instrument

The ESPS-5 survey consisted of four questionnaires (household, community, post-planting, and post-harvest questionnaires), similar to those used in previous waves but revised based on the results of those waves and on the need for new data they revealed. The following new topics are included in ESPS-5:

a. Dietary Quality: This module collected information on the household’s consumption of specified food items.

b. Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES): In this round the survey has implemented FIES. The scale is based on the eight food insecurity experience questions on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale | Voices of the Hungry | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (fao.org).

c. Basic Agriculture Information: This module is designed to collect minimal agriculture information from households. It is primarily for urban households. However, it was also used for a few rural households where it was not possible to implement the full agriculture module due to security reasons and administered for urban households. It asked whether they had undertaken any agricultural activity, such as crop farming and tending livestock) in the last 12 months. For crop farming, the questions were on land tenure, crop type, input use, and production. For livestock there were also questions on their size and type, livestock products, and income from sales of livestock or livestock products.

d. Climate Risk Perception: This module was intended to elicit both rural and urban households perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes about different climate-related risks. It also asked where and how households were obtaining information on climate and weather-related events.

e. Agriculture Mechanization and Video-Based Agricultural Extension: The rural area community questionnaire covered these areas rural areas. On mechanization the questions related to the penetration, availability and accessibility of agricultural machinery. Communities were also asked if they had received video-based extension services.

Cleaning operations

Final data cleaning was carried out on all data files. Only errors that could be clearly and confidently fixed by the team were corrected; errors that had no clear fix were left in the datasets. Cleaning methods for these errors are left up to the data user.

Response rate

ESPS-5 planned to interview 7,527 households from 565 enumeration areas (EAs) (Rural 316 EAs and Urban 249 EAs). However, due to the security situation in northern Ethiopia and to a lesser extent in the western part of the country, only a total of 4999 households from 438 EAs were interviewed for both the agriculture and household modules. The security situation in northern parts of Ethiopia meant that, in Tigray, ESPS-5 did not cover any of the EAs and households previously sampled. In Afar, while 275 households in 44 EAs had been covered by both the ESPS-4 agriculture and household modules, in ESPS-5 only 252 households in 22 EAs were covered by both modules. During the fifth wave, security was also a problem in both the Amhara and Oromia regions, so there was a comparable reduction in the number of households and EAs covered there.

More detailed information is available in the BID.