Purpose

The objectives of the LECS are basically to provide,

• macro estimates for the National Accounts, both private consumption and household investments and income from agriculture and businesses
• the consumption structure (weighing system) for the Consumer Price Index (CPI)
• estimates of labor force
• statistics on access to services
• statistics on nutrition
• statistics on poverty and income distribution
• statistics on time use

Target population

All non-institutional households in Lao PDR

Survey period

12 months, from March 2002 to February 2003

Survey design

Survey units are households, villages, village markets (prices) and  primary schools. LECS used six survey instruments: a diary to record household transactions, a household questionnaire, a time use diary, a price collection form, a village questionnaire and a primary school questionnaire.The household transactions diary was kept for one month. The time use diary covered a randomly selected 24-hour period. The price collection covered 92 commodities.

Sample design

A two-stage sampling scheme was used. At the first stage a sample of villages was selected by PPS sampling. The villages were stratified by province and within province by urban villages, rural villages with access to road and rural villages without access to road (54 strata). The number of sample villages in the province ranged from 12 to 48.  The sample of villages in each province was allocated randomly to a survey month so that each of the 12 survey months had approximately the same number of sample villages. In the second stage a systematic sample of 15 households was selected in each sample village. The selection was based on an updated list of households in the villages at the time of the survey.

Sample size

49 970 persons in 8092 households in 540 villages. Non-response negligible.

Survey content

Household level:

• All household transactions during the survey month. Transactions coded to consumption/expenditure, household business, agriculture and investment outlays
• Household composition
• Parents
• Education
• Labour force participation
• Victimization
• Nutrition
• Health check, measurements of heights and weights (children)
• Possession of durables and assets values
• Housing conditions - household
• Construction activities - household
• Household business
• Agriculture - household
• Health – evaluation of health, use of health services, health seeking behavior, health costs
• Purchases and selling of durables during the last 12 months
• Income and transfers – by all members of household
• Borrowing and lending – by household
• Time spent recorded for a period of 24 hours in a sampled day for 22 activities

Village level:

• Demography
• access to services
• agriculture
• general economic conditions
• wages and prices
• Prices for 92 basic goods and services recorded in nearest local market

Primary school:

• School characteristics
• Management
• Finances
• Teachers characteristics
• Decision making
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