There
has been a spectacular increase in the availability
and quality of data from developing countries in recent years.
Many of these datasets are
either in the public domain or can be obtained at modest cost from the
data collection agency. This page is intended as a resource to
help locate those data.
We provide links to some of the
data that are on-line and explanations of how to obtain others.
An on-going longitudinal survey of individuals, households,
families, communities and facilities, the first wave of the
survey was conducted in 1993/4 and included interviews with
7,224 households in 321 communities in 13 provinces in
Indonesia. The survey is representative of about 83% of the
Indonesian population. The second wave, in 1997/8, was followed
by a survey of 25% of the sample enumeration ares in 1998.
IFLS3 was conducted in 2000. IFLS4 is being conducted in 2007/08.
The surveys
contain retrospective histories about, for example,
employment, marriage,
fertility and migration over the life course of each
respondent. The surveys also include household consumption,
assets, self-reported health status and a battery of health measures
(including anthropometrics, hemoglobin, blood pressure, lung capacity
and time to stand from a sitting position). In 2007, cholesterol
and dry blood spots were added.
Public domain data and documentation are available on
the web
.
conducted in 1976/7 and 1988 also contain extensive
histories on employment, marriage, fertility and migration.
Respondents in the first wave were followed in the subsequent
waves; in the second wave, a refreshment sample was added.
MFLS1 (1976/77) and MFLS2 (1988)
are in the
public domain.
was conducted in 1996 and covers the same area as the Matlab
Demographic Surveillance System. The data are in the
public domain
.
A resurvey is being planned.
is an on-going nationally representative longitudinal
survey of individuals, households, families and
communities.
The first wave was conducted in 2002. The first follow-up was
completed in 2005. The second and third follow-ups are scheduled
for 2008 and 2011. In addition to
consumption, income, wealth,
employment, marriage and fertility,
the survey contains a module on crime and victimization
as well migration histories. Respondents are followed if they
move and interviewed in their new location. This includes
people who move to the U.S. and those that return to Mexico.
Biomarker data are collected and include
assets, self-reported health status and a battery of health measures
and dry blood spots.
is a single cross section survey which was
was conducted in rural communities in 4 of Guatemala's 22
departments. The survey was fielded in 1995. The data are
publicly available
.
Conducted by a team of researchers from the United States
and the Philippines,
the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey is an ongoing
study of a cohort of Filipino women who gave birth between May 1,
1983 and April 30, 1984 and have been re-interviewed
periodically since then.
The data are available at
UNC.
The China Health and Nutrition Survey
was conducted in 1989 and 1991 in 8 provinces in China
and provides a wealth of detailed information on health and
nutrition of adults and children including physical examinations.
These data are available at
UNC.
The Nang Rong projects represent
a major data collection effort that was started in 1984
with a census of households in 51 villages. The villages
were resurveyed in 1988 and again in 1994/95.
New entrants were interviewed and a subsample of
out migrants were followed.
These data are available at
UNC.
The Vietnam Life History Survey is a collaboration between
the University of Wasthington,
the Institute of Sociology and the Institute of Social Sciences,
in Vietnam. The survey collects
data from about 100 households in two urban and two rural
areas in Vietname.
The data are available at
CSDE at UW.
The Vietnam Longitudinal Survey is a collaboration between
Professor Charles Hirschman, University of Wasthington,
the Institute of Sociology in Vietnam. The survey collects
detailed demographic information from all adult respondents
in over 1,800 households in one area of Vietnam.
The data are available at
CSDE at UW.
The database provides district level data on
agriculture and climate in India from 1957/58 through 1986/87.
The dataset includes information on
Area planted, production and farm harvest prices for five major and
fifteen minor crops.
Areas under irrigated and high-yielding varieties (HYV)
for major crops.
Data on agricultural inputs, such as, fertilizers,
bullocks and tractors - in both quantity and price terms
Agricultural labor, cultivators, wages and factory
earnings, rural population and literacy proportion.
Meteorological station level climate data (average climate over
30 year period)
Soil data
The dataset was compiled by
Apurva Sanghi, K.S. Kavi Kumar, and James W. McKinsey,
of the World Bank and draws on work by James McKinsey
and Robert Evenson of Yale University.
For more information, click
here
.
The data and documentation are available
here
.
National Sample Survey Organization
The National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO)
of India has a long tradition of conducting
high quality surveys.
NSSO carries out socio-economic surveys,
undertakes field work for the Annual Survey of Industries
and follow-up surveys of Economic Census,
sample checks on area enumeration
and crop estimation surveys
and prepares the urban frames useful in drawing of urban samples,
besides collection of price data from rural and urban sectors.
The data are
available for purchase
on CD.
Learning and Education Achievement in Punjab Schools
The Learning and Education Achievement in Punjab Schools (LEAPS) Project
is a multi-year project initiated by researchers at Harvard University,
Pomona College, and the World Bank that attempts to capture and track
changes in the educational universe at the primary level (upto grade 5) in
112 villages in Pakistan. The main component of the project is a set of
extensive surveys designed & conducted by the LEAPS team, with care being
taken to be representative of the various actors in the educational
market.
The data consists of questionnaires administered to all 823 primary
schools (public, private, NGO) in the 112 villages, to over 800 teachers
(with basic information on 5,000 teachers), 1800 households, 6000 school
children, and achievement tests of 12,000 class 3 children in Mathematics,
English, and Urdu. All children, households, schools and teachers are
matched and then followed over three additional (annual) rounds of
surveys, for a complete 4-year panel.
The first round of data from these surveys & related documentation is now
publicly available for researchers at:
www.leapsproject.org.
The website
also provides related information (questionnaires for all rounds,
preliminary papers, and a LEAPS report that highlights findings from the
first round).
Since 1980, the
World Bank has been collecting multi-purpose household
survey data in several countries under the
Living Standards Measurement Study
umbrella.
That site contains information about the project,
lists the countries included in the project and
describes how data may be accessed.
For some of the surveys, the data
are available on the web.
IFPRI has conducted several very innovative surveys in African and Asian
countries. Many of these surveys are available for research
purposes. See their
home page and click on datasets.
and associated Thai databases are described here.
The Townsend Thai project began in 1997 with a relatively
large cross-section survey. Annual resurveys have
been conducted and a monthly survey was initiated in
August 1998.
This is an integrated longitudinal farm production and consumption survey
conducted by Christopher Udry and Markus Goldstein
(Yale University). Data may
be downloaded from
here.
collects longitudinal socio-demographic
data in Kenya and Malawi
under the direction of Susan Watkins and Jere Behrman.
Data are available for downloading
here.
NIDS is intended to be a nationally representative
panel study that examines income,
consumption and expenditure of households over time in South.
Africa.
The baseline survey is being conducted in 2008 and the first follow-up
is planned for 2010.
The data will
throw light on matters such as coping strategies deployed in response
to shocks and unexpected events whether
negative or positive, such as death in the
family or an unemployed relative obtaining a job.
In addition to income and expenditure dynamics,
study themes include the determinants of changes in poverty
and well-being;
household composition and structure;
fertility and mortality;
migrancy and migrant strategies;
labour market participation and economic activity;
human capital formation,
health and education; vulnerability and social
capital.
See the NIDS
web page for details.
Langeberge integrated household survey was conducted by a consortium of
South African and American universities along with government and
non government agencies in South Africa. Data may be requested
by sending an email. See their web page
web page for details.
in five Asian countries collected detailed information
on the status of women and their husbands in conjunction
with fertility choices.
Data collected in
Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines and Thailand in 1993/1994
are available for downloading
here.
is a prospective longitudinal survey of older
adults (born before 1951) and their spouses.
The first wave was conducted in 2001 and
interviewed almost 10,000 adults and 5,000
spouses. The first follow-up was completed
in 2003. The project is a collaboration
of researchers at the Universities of Pennsylvania,
Maryland and Wisconsin with INEGI in Mexico. It is
directed by Beth Soldo.
is a series of comparable cross-national surveys
on health and aging organized as
a cooperative venture among researchers in Argentina, Barbados,
Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Mexico and Uruguay.
The goal of the project is to describe health, cognitive
achievement and access to health care among people age 60
and older with a special focus on people over 80 years old.
Professor Alberto Palloni is the project PI which has been
funded by PAHO and the NIA.
Professor Doug Massey and collaborators have collected several
waves of surveys on migration from central Mexico with special
sub-samples of Mexicans living in Chicago. The data can
be obtained from the
MMP.
web-site of by contacting Kristin Espinosa at the University
of Pennsylvania. Her e-mail address is
espinosa@pop.upenn.edu.
is an extension of the
MMP.
Mexican Migration Project .
The project is directed by Professor Doug Massey
who, with his collaborators, has collected data
in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua,
Costa Rica and Peru. Data are available
here.
collects fertility and health surveys carried out in
Central America. Data from Belize, Guatemala, El
Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama
are included in the collection.
TAPS is an annual panel data set covering the period 2002 throuh 2006
that follows a native Amazonian horticultural and
foraging society experiencing rapid integration to the rest of the world.
The study has been tracking about 1,500 native Amazonians
in about 250 households of 13 villages
along the Maniqui River, Department of Beni, Bolivia,
and has introduced agricultural development projects.
TAPS surveys take place every year during June-August. The first five-years
of data, 2002-2006, are now available to the public in STATA.
To request access to the 2002-2006 panel data set and its
documentation go to the following web site:
http://people.brandeis.edu/~rgodoy/research/pgs/panel.html
or contact Ricardo Godoy (781) 736-2784, rgodoy@brandeis.edu
The World Fertility Surveys (WFS)
were conducted in 41 countries
during the 1970s and early 1980s.
The data are all in the public domain and
available at the
Office of Population Research at
Princeton University .
This is a very good site to find out about data on
fertility including the
Chinese In-Depth Fertility Surveys.
Countries for which World Fertility Surveys are available include:
More recent fertility, mortality and health data are available from
Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) .
National
which is
DHS has been collecting national sample surveys of population and
maternal and child health conducted in many developing
countries since the 1980s. Data are currently collected under
the umbrella of the Measure project which is administered by
Macro International.
Data have been collected in four waves:
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) assists countries throughout
the world in the development, implementation and analysis of national
reproductive health surveys.
Firm level data collected by The World Bank
in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of African
Economies, Oxford University, and several Government Statistical
Agencies may be downloaded from
this site.
CSAE faculty have collected firm level data in several
African countries.
Data from
Ghana, Ethiopia, Tanzania and also, from a
comparative study, in Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya and Zimbabwe.
are available from the
CSAE web-site
.
Some of these data are also available on the
World Bank web site.
This site is maintained by The World Bank and
contains country level data on economic growth.
Data related to several articles published on
models of growth are available.
These include, for example:
Barro, Robert J., and Jong-Wha Lee. 1993.
"International Comparisons of Educational Attainment."
Journal of Monetary Economics
32 (3): 363-94.
De Long, J. Bradford, and Lawrence Summers. 1993.
"How Strongly Do Developing Economies Benefit from Equipment Investment?"
Journal of Monetary Economics
32 (3): 395-415.
Fischer, Stanley. 1993.
"The Role of Macroeconomic Factors in Growth."
Journal of Monetary Economics
32 (3): 485-512
King, Robert G., and Ross Levine. 1993.
"Finance, Entrepreneurship, and Growth: Theory and Evidence."
Journal of Monetary Economics 32 (3): 513-42.
Levine, Ross, and David Renelt. 1992.
"A Sensitivity Analysis of Cross-Country Growth Regressions."
American Economic Review 82 (4): 942-63.
Many of these offices provide a wealth of information.
Census data are available from these offices;
some household- and firm-level surveys are
public use and may either
be downloaded or ordered from their office.
Geohive provides a listing of statistical offices
across the globe.
This page is maintained by the Center for Health
and Development at UCLA.
Please send comments and suggestions
about this page including links to data sources to
Duncan Thomas.
Address all questions about data availability,
access and quality to the institution providing
the data.
In those cases in which there is no
institution listed, the data are not supported.
