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toolbox: Income and expenditure (I&E) survey

Attributed to: Jackeline Velazco
For enquiries contact Jane French [email protected]
Version dated May 2006

1. What is the I&E survey
2. Conceptual rational for I&E survey
3. How I&E surveys contribute to WeD research
4. Description
5. How the I&E survey was developed
6. How the I&E survey was implemented
7. How the I&E surveys can be analysed
8. Links to other WeD research tools
9. Appendices restricted access files. Please contact Jane French [email protected]
Many of the links below are to documents with restricted access. Please contact For enquiries contact Jane French [email protected] for access to these.

1. What is the I&E survey

The Income and Expenditure (I&E) survey has been prepared to produce data on the income and expenditure patterns of the household as a whole and on the individuals within it. It is designed to capture data on the different categories of incomes (self-employment, wage income, and in kind), expenditures (production costs, food and non-food items), credit and saving behaviour as well as subjective indicators as global happiness and life domain satisfaction. The survey is also designed to capture information on the extent of seasonal variations on income and expenditure over one year.

Two different instruments are being used to collect this information: a) a diary (Ethiopia, Thailand), and b) a questionnaire (Bangladesh, Peru). The different instruments have been devised to fit with other aspects of data collection undertaken in the countries and hence also offer an opportunity for comparative evaluation of the methods involved. The sample selection has been informed by the results from the Resource and Needs Questionnaire (RANQ ), either by using it as a sampling frame for a random sample, or for an approach allowing purposeful sampling from categories of households according to objective wellbeing indicators.

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2. Conceptual rationale for I&E survey

The WeD Framework implies that there are three basic categories of data that should be analysed: Having, Doing and Thinking.

a) on what people/households/communities/nations have or do not have (material and human resources, social relationships, status)

b) on what people do or do not, or can or cannot do, with these resources,

c) on how people think about what they have (do not have) and can do (or not) with what they have. This encompasses how people make or cannot make sense of what happens (meaning); explanations of why people do what they do, and also (what we have thus far been calling Quality of Life) how people judge, assess, and feel about these things.

The RANQ survey was an initial survey to collect information on households resources and needs. The need to keep it to a manageable size meant that it was not possible to incorporate income and expenditure data collection as well. It was therefore decided to collect this data separately.

It is important though to have data on consumption measures of poverty in order to be able to analyse them in relation to measures of both objective and subjective wellbeing. However, the particular country contexts being researched demonstrate high degrees of seasonal variation. These result in fluctuations in income and expenditure, which can have significant impacts on measures of objective and subjective wellbeing. Concerns about which households are able to effectively smooth their consumption mean that capturing these fluctuations was considered to be of major importance. Hence the design of the instrument is to capture the data over a period of one year.

The Income and Expenditure survey therefore provides information on what people do with their resources – the ‘flow’ data to complement the ‘stock’ data provided by the RANQ which offers detailed information on households’ access to and control over a wide range of resources, such as social, natural, material, human and cultural resources, that influence wellbeing outcomes.

3. How I&E surveys contribute to WeD research

The Income and Expenditure Survey therefore serves the following three purposes for the WeD research:

1. The collection of data including expenditure, income, saving, credit, household decision making on the allocation of income and expenditure, and needs satisfaction amongst the households and individuals in the research communities
2. The generation of data that can be used for comparative analysis both within countries and potentially across the four countries
3. Development of instruments specifically designed for the study of households livelihood strategies
.

4. Description

The two instruments, the questionnaire (Bangladesh, Peru) and the diary (Ethiopia, Thailand), collect data on the following main aspects:

Section
Questionnaire
Diary
• Updating household demographics (used in relation to data collected by the RANQ)
*
*
• Income
Income from crops and livestock activities
Income from household enterprises
Income from wages and salaries
Income from rents and transfers


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*
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*


*
*
*
*

• Expenditure
Food Expenditure
Non-food expenditure
Agricultural and livestock expenditure


*
*
*


*
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*

• Expenditure decision and income management
*
*
• Saving and credit
*
*
• Need domain satisfaction and happiness
*
*
Specific country issues
• Motives for consumption (Peru)
• Migration (Peru and Bangladesh)
• Employment and remittances (Bangladesh)
• Life events, health and illness, education/learning, rest and recreation, social interaction with wider world, government officials, disagreements and resolution (Ethiopia)


*
*
*

 

 


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5. How the I&E survey was developed

Before the survey instruments were administered, they underwent a grounding and piloting phase within each of the four countries. This involved the identification of the empirical data required to address the conceptual issues; preparation of the survey instrument for the collection of empirical data; selection of the communities and households from which the data was to be gathered, mainly informed by RANQ data, and the planning of a data management system.

6. How the I&E survey was implemented

The implementation of the survey has proceeded as follows in each of the WeD countries:

  Bangladesh Ethiopia Peru Thailand
Research tools Questionnaire
Codebook
Diary Questionnaire
Codebook
Diary
Question Sheet
Sample size (number of households) 300 72 250 72
Sampling strategy Stratified Random Purposive Random Purposive
Rounds along a year 3 visits Monthly
visits
3 visits Monthly
Visits

Bangladesh

  • Data is being collected from 300 households (50 from each of the six WeD sites in Bangladesh) using the questionnaire method. These have used a random stratified sample from the RANQ combining the self-assessed economic positions of the households (re-categorising 7 categories into three: rich middle, poor) with the objectively obtained occupational categories (main occupation).
  • A Microsoft Access database has been created for data entry.
  • The data is being collected in three rounds using recall over the previous four months.

  • Data is being collected using a diary instrument.
  • Data is being collected from 12 households in each of 6 research sites. These have been purposively sampled to offer insight into the wellbeing of households with different objective wellbeing dimensions. They are: 2 rich, 2 middle-income, 2 poor, 2 destitute, 2 elite, 1 female headed, 1 elderly single woman.
  • The data is collected in 12 visits over the year therefore requiring recall of one month only.
  • The data is collected using a checklist of items and then consolidated into categories for entry into a specially designed Microsoft Access database.
  • Data is being collected using a questionnaire instrument from 250 households in the 7 WeD sites in Peru.
  • A random sample from the RANQ considering the main occupation of the head of the household was selected.
  • The data is being collected in three rounds using recall over the previous four months.
  • Data is being stored in a Microsoft Access database
  • PSU South: Using diaries (and question sheet) with 12 households (2 rich, 2 middle-income, 2 poor for each of Muslim and Buddhist households). This was necessary considering all the WeD communities in the South included mixed proportions of Buddhist and Muslim households. This characteristic is common to Songkhla and other Southern Provinces
  • KKU North East: Using diaries (and question sheet) with 9 households in both the urban and rural sites (3 rich, 3 middle-income, 3 poor). No religious distinction was made as Muslims are a minority in the North East and were not represented in the WeD communities
  • The data is collected in 12 visits over the year. All visits included a detailed narrative account of the main issues affecting the household in the last month and were an integral component of the diary method
  • Data will be stored in a specially designed Microsoft Access database.

7. How the I&E surveys can be analysed

The I&E data permits analysis a) within a site, b) across sites of the same country, e.g. by rural and urban areas, and potentially c) across the four countries. The following are examples of the research questions it could address:

  • What levels and patterns (composition and diversification) of income and expenditure do WeD respondent households show and what are the main fluctuations in these over the year? In particular who experiences the greatest/least fluctuations and who can/cannot smooth their consumption accordingly?
  • What is the relationship between consumption measures of objective wellbeing and indicators of subjective wellbeing?
  • What are the main patterns of inequality between households?
  • What are the main patterns of saving and borrowing and how do these relate to the smoothing of income and expenditure fluctuations?
  • What are the patterns of intra-household income and expenditure management which occur in the household?
  • What resources are important to households? What investment strategies are they using to achieve their wellbeing outcomes? What are the processes that affect their ability to achieve these? Is there a gap between their stated aims and their actions?

Further analysis questions are captured in the income and expenditure analysis grid.

8. Links to other WeD research tools

The Income and Expenditure survey provides a large data source which is linked directly to other WeD research tools. The diaries contain qualitative narrative accounts of the important events in the life of the household throughout the year as well as the income and expenditure data and therefore are also part of the process research. They therefore complement data from the RANQ with that of household income and expenditure and can also be directly linked for particular households and individuals to data collected using the Quality of Life (QoL) instruments.

9. Appendices



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