Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/267839 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
WIDER Working Paper No. 2022/93
Publisher: 
The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), Helsinki
Abstract: 
The paucity of reliable, timely household consumption data in many low- and middleincome countries has made it difficult to assess how global poverty has evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic. Standard poverty measurement requires collecting household consumption data, which is rarely done by phone. To test the feasibility of collecting consumption data over the phone, we conducted a survey experiment in urban Ethiopia, randomly assigning households to either phone or in-person interviews. In the phone survey, average per capita consumption was 23 per cent lower than in the in-person survey, and the estimated poverty headcount was twice as high. There is evidence of survey fatigue occurring early in phone interviews but not in in-person interviews; the bias is correlated with household characteristics. While the phone survey mode provides comparable estimates when measuring diet-based food security, it is not amenable to measuring consumption using the 'best practice' approach originally devised for in-person surveys.
Subjects: 
survey experiment
phone survey
survey fatigue
consumption
household surveys
JEL: 
C81
I32
O10
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
ISBN: 
978-92-9267-227-0
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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