Definition
PRECIP consists of a set of 72 separate variables. These variables report the average precipitation in millimeters, received within a 10-kilometer circular buffer around each DHS cluster location, for the 60 individual months prior to the survey start date, the month of the survey start date, and the 11 individual months following the survey start date. Note that "average" precipitation here refers to averaging the monthly precipitation values for the various subareas included in the buffer zone.
By adding PRECIP to your data cart, you are in effect adding 72 separate variables for:
the 60 individual months prior to the survey start date, denoted by the number of months prior to the survey start date (e.g., PRECIP_01 is the average precipitation in the month before the survey start date; PRECIP_60 is the average precipitation in the 60th month before the survey start date);
the month of the survey start date (PRECIP_00);
the 11 individual months following the month of the survey start date, denoted by the number of months following the month of the survey start date (e.g., PRECIP_A01 is the average precipitation in the month following the month of the survey start date).
The full set of monthly precipitation data, from January 1981 through August 2018, is available on the IPUMS-DHS contextual variables downloads [URL omitted from DDI.] page. Users can merge the precipitation data, available in csv format, with their IPUMS-DHS data extract to create average or total precipitation variables (e.g., average January precipitation, total 2017 precipitation), for the time frame suited to their research question.
For more information on IPUMS-DHS contextual variables and how they are constructed, refer to the documentation [URL omitted from DDI.] on these variables.
