Measuring consumption over the phone: Evidence from a survey experiment in urban Ethiopia.

ABSTRACT: The paucity of reliable, timely household consumption data in many low- and middle-income countries have 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 collected 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 is 23 percent lower and the estimated poverty headcount is twice as high than in the in-person survey. We observe evidence of survey fatigue occurring early in phone interviews but not in in-person interviews; the bias is correlated with household

SUBMITTER: Abate GT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9711906 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature