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Rural Livelihood Survey 2012-2013, Round 4

Malawi, 2013
Central
National Statistical Office (NSO)
Created on March 12, 2019 Last modified March 12, 2019 Page views 23221 Download 278 Documentation in PDF Metadata DDI/XML JSON

Identification

Survey ID Number
MWI_2013_MRLS-R4_v01_M
Title
Rural Livelihood Survey 2012-2013, Round 4
Subtitle
Round 4
Country
Name Country code
Malawi MWI
Study type
Other Household Survey [hh/oth]
Series Information
The Malawi Rural Livelihood Survey (MRLS) is a panel survey of households, interviewed 4 times from November 2012-2013. The survey was designed in order to conduct a randomized control study of Malawi Malawi's large-scale public works program (PWP) which operates under the Malawi Social Action Fund (MASAF).

The MRLS was conducted in four rounds:
- Round 1 November 2012: before the PWP started and during the planting season.
- Round 2 February 2013: after the first cycle of the PWP and during the lean season.
- Round 3 April-May 2013: after the lean season PWP cycle and pre-harvest.
- Round 4 November 2013: after the completion of the 2012/2013 season and two rounds of PWP implementation in select communities.
Abstract
The Malawi Rural Livelihood Survey (MRLS) is a panel survey of households, interviewed 4 times from November 2012-2013. The survey was designed in order to conduct a randomized control study of Malawi Malawi's large-scale public works program (PWP) which operates under the Malawi Social Action Fund (MASAF).
Kind of Data
Sample survey data [ssd]
Unit of Analysis
- Household
- Individual

Scope

Notes
The 2012-13 Malawi Rural Livelihood Survey covered the following topics:

- Household identification
- Household roster
- Education
- Health
- Time use & labor
- Event calander for casual labor and public works
- Food consumption
- Food security
- Non-food expenditure one week
- Non-food expenditure one month
- Other non-food expenditure
- Durable goods one month
- Farm implements
- Transfer received in
- Transfer given out
- Social safety nets
- Credit received
- Calendar credit received
- Credit given
- Calendar credit given
- Shocks and coping strategies
- Risks and cognition

Coverage

Geographic Coverage
Among the 28 districts which were included in the PWP at the time of this study, the MRLS was conducted in 12 districts which were randomly selected across the three strata of the country's three geographic regions to ensure that the study was representative of the country's population.
Universe
In order to have pre-program baseline data that predated the vetting of communities for the PWP, the national Integrated Household Survey (IHS3) collected in 2010/2011 by Malawi's National Statistics Office was used as the basis for the MRLS. Within the 12 selected districts, the list of PWP-eligible (pre-screened) communities from the District Council and Traditional Authorities was compared with the 786 enumeration areas (EAs) in the IHS3.

Producers and sponsors

Primary investigators
Name Affiliation
National Statistical Office (NSO) Government of Malawi

Sampling

Sampling Procedure
The sampling frame for the MRLS was the subset of IHS3 enumeration areas (EAs) in the 12 selected districts which were also in pre-selected communities for the PWP. This resulted in a total of 182 villages (EAs) out of the 786 EAs in the IHS3 to be included in the MRLS. In each community, the MRLS would re-survey the 16 randomly surveyed households in the IHS3.
Deviations from the Sample Design
In practice, of the 182 EAs selected for the MRLS, 23 EAs were incorrectly identified as IHS3 EAs. These non-IHS3 EAs then have no 2010/2011 data and as a result, a new household listing was conducted in these EAs in order to randomly select 16 households in each EA.

The final target sample for the MRLS was 2,912 households (16 households in 182 communities). This includes replacement households drawn at random when required. Households in EAs that were covered by the IHS3-panel survey in the fall 2013 were excluded from Round 4 field work (resulting in a smaller sample in Round 4). One can merge in those data from the IHS3 panel data (publicly available).

The 182 villages in the MRLS sample were randomly divided into five categories with regards to the PWP (four with PWP treatment and one with no PWP). Within each PWP treatment village, a random sample of households was offered an opportunity to work in the public works program. The details of this are described in Beegle, Galasso, and Goldberg (2017). “Direct and Indirect Effects of Malawi’s Public Works Program on Food Security.” Journal of Development Economics 128: 1-23.

Data Collection

Dates of Data Collection
Start End
2013-11 2013-11
Data Collection Mode
Computer Assisted Personal Interview [capi]

Questionnaires

Questionnaires
Household and community questionnaires were used to collect the data. The questionnaires were drawn from the IHS3 questionnaire to ensure comparability. After Round 1, modules were updated in some places to reflect improvements or capture transitions from the previous round.

Access policy

Citation requirements
Use of the dataset must be acknowledged using a citation which would include:
- the Identification of the Primary Investigator
- the title of the survey (including country, acronym and year of implementation)
- the survey reference number
- the source and date of download

Metadata production

DDI Document ID
DDI_MWI_2013_MRLS-R4_v01_M
Producers
Name Abbreviation Affiliation Role
Development Economics Data Group DECDG The World Bank Documentation of the DDI
Date of Metadata Production
2019-03-07
DDI Document version
Version 01 (March 2019)

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