Saturday, January 09, 2016

2014 Armenian Household Survey Released

The 2014 Household Integrated Living Conditions Survey was recently released by Armstat. As with previously released surveys (2004-2013), observations are aggregated at the household level and information is released for a subset of the available variables; there are 5184 households in the survey. You may download the survey for free from the databases page of Armstat (http://armstat.am/en/?nid=271). The survey, with fewer select variables aggregated at the household member level (http://armstat.am/en/?nid=374), as well as by expenditure type (http://armstat.am/en/?nid=452) are also available. The survey is available both as xls and sav (spss) files.
While the data have many useful applications, the limited information available at the household members level make the data not very suitable for many micro applications. As an example, we do not observe member level income and sources; these are aggregated at the household level. The full and richer raw data is typically available to the staff of some governmental agencies and international organizations, or their consultants; they are seldom available to academics. Obviously, Armstat is trying to balance data access with protecting the confidentiality of survey participants. But given that household level data is already made available, I am not sure if there is anything to gain from not providing the member level data at the very least to academics. For a regional comparison, see the much richer available Georgian Surveys (http://geostat.ge/index.php?action=meurneoba&mpid=1&lang=eng).