 Measuring consumption over the phone: Evidence from a survey experiment in urban EthiopiaGashaw T. Abate, Alan de Brauw, Kalle Hirvonen and Abdulazize Wolle No 2087, IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Abstract: The paucity of reliable and timely household consumption data in many low- and middle-income countries have made it practically impossible to assess how global poverty has evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the burst of phone surveys, there has been few attempts to collect household consumption data. To test the feasibility of collecting consumption data over the phone, we conducted a survey experiment in urban Ethiopia, randomly assigning a balanced sample to either a phone or an in-person interview. The average value of per capita consumption is 23 percent lower, and the estimated poverty headcount is twice as high in the phone survey relative to the in-person survey. We see evidence of survey fatigue occurring early on in phone interviews but not in in-person interviews, and the bias is correlated with household characteristics. While the phone survey mode provides lower costs, it cannot replace in-person surveys for household consumption measurement. Keywords: surveys; covid-19; households; urban areas; food security; food consumption; information and communication technologies; survey design; poverty; Ethiopia; Sub-Saharan Africa; Africa; Eastern Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fpr:ifprid:2087 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in IFPRI discussion papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Contact information at EDIRC. |
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