Global Preference Survey

"an experimentally validated survey data set of time preference, risk preference, positive and negative reciprocity, altruism, and trust from 80,000 people in 76 countries" (Falk et al. (2018), abstract)

Introduced by Falk et al. (2018).

IPUMS International

Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) International allow researchers to download censuses from various developing countries in the comparable format.

See Kugler and Fitch (2018) for detail.

See this page for the list of countries whose census is downloadable.


Bleakley (2006) uses censuses from Brazil, Columbia, and Mexico downloaded from this website.

Tarozzi (2011) uses the 2000 Mexico census downloaded from this website.

An agricultural survey for more than 9,500 African households

"conducted in the growing seasons 2002/2003 or 2003/2004 in eleven African countries: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Niger and Senegal in western Africa; Egypt in northern Africa; Ethiopia and Kenya in eastern Africa; South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe in southern Africa." (Waha et al. 2016)

Work and Iron Status Evaluation (WISE)

See Duncan Thomas's website for details.

Its consumption expenditure and price data is used by McKelvey (2011) to check the validity of unit value as a proxy for price.


The paneL data on farm labor demand and household composition is used by Lafave and Thomas (2016) to test the neoclassical agricultural household model.

Sample periods

"After a listing survey in late 2001, a population-representative sample of households living in Purworejo kabupaten were interviewed every four months beginning in 2002 and continuing through 2005. A longer-term follow-up was conducted five years after the start of the survey in 2007." (Lafave and Thomas (2016), p. 1926)

See section 4 of Lafave and Thomas (2016) for more detail, including data quality issues.

LSMS (Living Standards Measurement Surveys)

http://go.worldbank.org/IFS9WG7EO0

Uganda Survey of War Affected Youth

A long run tracking survey of 1300 young men and women who grew up in the midst of war in northern Uganda.

http://chrisblattman.com/projects/sway/

Indonesian Faimily Life Survey

Indonesian Faimily Life Survey has been conducted four times (1993, 1997, 2000, 2007).

Surveyed community locations are geo-referenced (I'm not sure for which waves, though).

See the BREAD website for a summary description of the data.

Used by Duflo (2001, See Table 1 Panel C and footnote 10) to check the prevalence of grade repetition among primary school pupils.

The 3rd wave in 2000 is used by Maccini and Yang (2009) to estimate the impact of rainfall in the birth year on height, schooling, household expenditures, and earnings in the adulthood.

Used by Alatas et al. (2016) to estimate the AR(1) process of household-level wealth.

MICS (Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys)

Here's the description of MICS by UNICEF, WHO, The World Bank and UN Population Division (2007) (page 15):

Originally developed by UNICEF to help assess progress towards the goals established by the 1990 World Summit for Children, MICS surveys now serve as a monitoring tool for the MDGs and other international commitments... Three rounds of MICS surveys have been conducted, in 1994-95, 2000-01, and 2005-06. Over 50 countries participated in each round. MICS surveys typically sample 4,000 to 5,000 households, although samples can range up to 15,000 households. The women’s questionnaire includes a module on child mortality which asks how many children a woman has ever borne, when she first gave birth and how many of her children have died or survived.

See UNICEF's website for more details such as the questionnaires and how to download survey.

Ethiopian Rural Household Surveys

A panel household survey conducted by Stefan Dercon and his colleagues in 1989, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1999, 2004, and 2009. The details are available on his website.

Panel data conducted 1989-1995 are downloadable at the above webpage. 1997 can be obtained by contacting IFPRI.

Sample

15 villages with 1477 households in total were surveyed three times, twice in 1994 and once in 1995. Six of the 15 villages were surveyed in 1989 as well. For more detail, see this documentation. In the 1997 survey, 9 additional villages were surveyed.

Variables
Household composition, education, asset ownership, credit, non-food expenditure, off-farm activities, land use, agricultural inputs, crop outputs, livestock ownership, health, health care provision, anthropometrics, food expenditure, female and child activities, etc.

The 1997 survey collects community-level information on electricity and water, sewage and toilet facilities, health services, education, NGO activity, migration, wages, and production and marketing.

The survey in 2004 collects information on interviewees' trust in government, perception on property rights security etc., and is used by Zerfu (2006).

Since 2004, subjective well-being measures are collected, used by Alem and Colmer (2015).

Sierra Leone 2004 Population and Housing Census

Aggregate statistics are available here:
http://opendata.gov.sl/dataset/sierra-leone-population-and-housing-census

Used by Casey (2015) to obtain ethnic composition at the jurisdiction level.

MLSFH (Malawi Longitudinal Study of Family and Health)

https://malawi.pop.upenn.edu

Panel data of up to 4,000 individuals in three regions of rural Malawi (Balaka, Mchinji, and Rumphi), collected in 1998, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2012.

Used by Thornton (2008) and Delavande and Kohler (2016) for identifying the causes of HIV infection.

Sakernas

Sakernas (Survei Angkatan Kerja Nasional) is Indonesia's annual labor force survey, representative at the level of 23 provinces.

Used by Kis-Katos and Sparrow (2015) to compute real hourly wages.

Susenas

Susenas (Survei Sosial Ekonomi Nasional) is Indonesia's annual nation-wide repeated cross-sectional household survey, representative at the district level.

Used by Kis-Katos and Sparrow (2015) to obtain the district-level poverty measures.

Indonesia 1990 Census

The main sector of occupation for each individual at the 2-digit level is available and used by Kis-Katos and Sparrow (2015) to identify the relevant tariff rates at each district for estimating the impact of tariff reductions on poverty.

World Bank Enterprise Surveys

www.enterprisesurveys.org

Surveys of establishments owned by formal firms with 5 or more employees across various countries.

Used by Gennaioli et al (2013) to estimate firm-level productivity from sales, labor force, educational level of management and employees, energy and capital use and also to measure the subnational-level quality of institutions (bribery, red tape, law and order, property rights, borrowing constraints). They find a large role of educational level of management in regional development.

Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS)

DHS is a set of cross-country household surveys on health. See Corsi et al (2012) for a succinct overview of the surveys.

The Minnesota Population Center leads the initiative to make the DHS data comparable across countries: see the Integrated DHS website for detail.

HOW TO OBTAIN DATA: Log on to http://www.measuredhs.com and follow the procedure outlined here. (For some surveys, an extra permission of use is needed.)

LIST OF COUNTRIES: available here.

For the following countries, see also separate posts in this blog: Ethiopia, Lesotho, Paraguay, Peru, Sri Lanka, and Zambia.

SAMPLING METHOD: This is the guideline for all DHS surveys. For the actual sampling method used in each survey, see the DHS Final Report for relevant surveys, which can be downloaded at http://www.measuredhs.com/pubs. (Pick the country name and choose "DHS Final Reports" for publication type to search.)

QUESTIONNAIRE: The DHS surveys have evolved over time. There are five phases each of which contains a different set of questions (some of them are consistent across phases). The Model Questionnaire from all the five phases are available here. For the actual questionnaire used in each survey, see the DHS Final Report for relevant surveys, which can be downloaded at http://www.measuredhs.com/pubs. (Pick the country name and choose "DHS Final Reports" for publication type to search.)

The questionnaire consists of the core questionnaire (used in every survey) and optional modules (used in some of the surveys). Among these modules is maternal mortality.

CODEBOOK: For the complete list of variables in the datasets, download DHS Recode Manuals (one for each phase) from here. Beware that it is not easy to map each question in the questionnaire to the variable number in the codebook because the numbering system is very different. But the description of variables in the codebook is sometimes imprecise. Checking exactly what question is asked is therefore essential. Some variables are not available depending on which survey you are looking at. To learn this, see the ".doc" file zipped in the individual recode file for each survey.

Other Documentations:
Fieldwork Manuals

Data Processing Manual (see pp. 7-14 for how dates of birth, marriage, etc. are imputed)

Date imputation takes two stages. First, define the upper and lower bounds of the date. For the date of birth of children of interviewed women, for example, the age of the children, the age at death (if dead), the dates of vaccination, the duration of breastfeeding, etc. are used to narrow the bounds. The fact that two births cannot be less than 7 months apart (allowing for premature births) is also used to narrow the bounds. Then the date is imputed by picking one number randomly within the final bounds.

Description on dataset types (what is household recode, individual recode, etc.)

Description on file types (what is hierarchical or flat file?)

Description on file names (e.g. what does COIR41FL.ZIP stand for?)


What variables are available:

Anthropometry data (height and weight) is now collected for all the surveyed women of child bearing age. In the previous rounds of the surveys (until 1999), such data is collected only for women who gave birth within 3 or 5 years before the survey. (Exception to this is Cote d'Ivoire 1988/89 where all surveyed women were measured for their height and weight.) In the earliest rounds of surveys (until 1989), women's anthropometric data was not collected at all. Deaton (2007) uses the height data from DHS surveys extensively.

Hemoglobin level (for measuring anemia) is collected in the latest rounds of the survey (after 1999). Page 14 of the Model Questionnaire has some description on this. For details, see the following two documents:
http://www.measuredhs.com/pubs/pub_details.cfm?ID=293
http://www.measuredhs.com/pubs/pub_details.cfm?ID=372

Information on children's food intake is available though different versions collect the information in different ways. In DHS I and II surveys, what liquid and food is given during the past 24 hours as complementary diet is collected only for women still breastfeeding (available as variables V409-V414). DHS III surveys collect the same information for all living children born in the past 3 or 5 years (variables M37 or V409-V414 for the last born child). In addition, DHS III surveys ask what liquid and food is given during the past 7 days (variables M40). DHS IV surveys collect the same information only for the last born child living with his/her mother for the last 24 hours (variables M37 or V469) or for the last 7 days (variables M40 or V470).

Information on the treatment for fever and cough (symptoms of malaria and pneumonia, respectively, two of the major killers of children) is not very consistent across different rounds of surveys. First of all, the recall period changed from DHS-II surveys: in DHS-I, mothers were asked whether their child got fever or cough during the last four weeks; in DHS-II, it changed to the last two weeks. Then what treatments were given stopped being asked in DHS-III surveys. In DHS-IV, drugs taken for fever were again asked, but not for cough. To whom advice or treatment was sought keeps being collected, but it is not clear whether health professionals were not absent during the visit.

For variables V414 and V414A-D (what foods did the baby eat during the last 24 hours) in the DHS II surveys, even though the Recode Manual suggests that V414 is used only if V414-D is not collected, Burkina Faso's 1992 survey and Niger's 1992 survey use both. For both cases, it seems V414 refers to another food category in addition to V414A and V414D (in the questionnaire, three types of foods were asked about: "bouillie", "Autre aliment specialement préparé pour l'enfant", and "Plat familial").

Data on schooling for all the members of surveyed households is available in the household schedule. See variables HV106-HV110, HV121-HV129.

Data on infrastructure at the household level is available: access to electricity (HV206), telephone (HV221), and tap water (HV231).

Self-reported ethnicity of women is available (variable V131) for some surveys including the Rwanda 1992 survey.

References for understanding the dataset further

In order to understand the medical background for each variable, read Model Questionnaires, which also explain the purpose of each question. Do have a look at the earlier versions of the questionnaire because the newest version often describes the purpose of questions newly added only.

For further medical background for child health history questions (immunization, treatment of diarrhea, etc.), Gareth Jones et al. (2003) "How Many Child Deaths Can We Prevent This Year?" The Lancet, 362: 65-71 is extremely useful.

I have created this document to help researchers to match subnational districts in Sub-Saharan African countries between different rounds of DHS surveys.

Lubotsky and Wittenberg (2006, Review of Economics & Statistics) proposes how to make the best of asset ownership variables in the DHS data to estimate the impact of household wealth.

Papers using this dataset include:

Vogl (2016) to demonstrate how the relationship between fertility and income/education flips over the decades:

• "[T]he associations of fertility with parental durable goods ownership and paternal education flipped from positive to negative in Africa and in rural Asia [between the 1986-94 and 2006-11 periods]; they were negative throughout in Latin America." (page 367)
• "Among birth cohorts of the 1940s and 50s, most countries show positive associations between the number of ... siblings and educational attainment. Among cohorts of the 1980s, most countries show the opposite." (page 367)

Oster (2007) to measure sexual behaviour and knowledge on HIV in African countries.

Oster (2005) to measure sex ratios at birth in African countries.

Young (2005) for the data on fertility and education. In some footnotes of this paper, the author reports a couple of peculiarities found in the data (see footnotes 35 and 58).

Dow et al. (1999) use Malawi 1992, Tanzania 1994, Zambia 1992, and Zimbabwe 1994 to investigate the effect of tetanus vaccine on birth weight.

Pitt (1997) use the datasets for 14 Sub-Saharan African countries to investigate the determinants of child mortality.

Used by demographers to investigate the determinants of immunization uptakes. See Desai and Alva (1998) and Gage et al. (1997).

Thomas et al. (1991) use Brazil 1986 survey to investigate how parental education affects child height, by using the information on the frequency for mothers to listen to the radio, watch television, and read a newspaper.

Other papers using the DHS surveys can be found here.

OECD ORBIS database

Cross-country firm-level micro dataset. Purchasable from: http://www.bvdinfo.com/en-gb/our-products/company-information/international-products/orbis

The list of middle-income countries seem to include: Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Thailand, etc.

According to Gopinath et al. (2015), the ORBIS database is superior to manufacturing censuses in that the balance sheet data is also available. It is also superior to Compustat or Worldscope in that small, private firms are included in addition to large listed companies.


For more detail, see

• Pinto Ribeiro, S., S. Menghinello and K. De Backer (2010), “The OECD ORBIS Database: Responding to the Need forFirm-Level Micro-Data in the OECD”, OECD Statistics Working Papers, 2010/01, OECD Publishing.

• Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan, Bent Sorensen, Carolina Villegas-Sanchez, Vadym Volosovych, Sevcan Yesiltas (2015), "How to Construct Nationally Representative Firm Level data from the ORBIS Global Database", NBER Working Paper No. 21558

China Urban Household Surveys

The repeated cross-sectional surveys of urban households in China. The annual data for 1992-2007 is used by Ge and Yang (2014). (See section 2.2 for detail.)

International Crime Victim Surveys (ICVS)

The ICVS is cross-country household surveys on crime experiences including corruption.

The survey years are 1989, 1992, 1996/97, 2000/01, 2004/05, and 2010(?).

The following papers use the data on corruption from these surveys.

Hunt, J. (2004) "Trust and Bribery: The Role of the Quid Pro Quo and the Link with Crime."NBER Working Papers 10510, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

Mocan, N. (2008) "What Determines Corruption? International Evidence From Microdata." Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International 46(4): 493-510.

Microfinance Institution Data

The Mix Market makes available the data on microfinance institutions around the world.

Used by Ahlin et al. (2011), de Quidt et al. (2012), Allcott (2015) among others.