Migration in National Surveys

Survey Data Catalogue

Types of Surveys

Child Labour Surveys
Demographic and Health Surveys
Integrated Surveys
Living Standards Measurement Surveys
Population and Housing Censuses

Child Labour Surveys (CLS) are designed to generate national level data on the economic activities of children aged 5-17. They are conducted by national statistical institutes with the technical assistance of the Statistical Information and Monitoring Programme on Child Labour (SIMPOC), which is the statistical unit of the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (ILO/IPEC). Since 1998 SIMPOC has assisted over 50 developing countries in the implementation of nearly 60 national CLSs. A total of 22 CLS micro data sets are currently available to the public via SIMPOC, and freely accessible under the child labour statistics section of the IPEC website.

=> more information on CLS surveys

Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) are designed for the study of health and population trends in developing countries. They are conducted as part of the Measure DHS programme, which started in 1984 and is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The implementing agency of the project is Macro International Inc., an Opinion Research Corporation company. More than 200 DHS surveys have been conducted in 70 developing countries around the world since the programme's inception. DHS data sets are managed by Measure DHS and are in most cases freely accessible to the public via the Measure DHS website, which is also regularly updated.

=> more information on DHS surveys

Integrated Surveys (IS) are multi-topic surveys - often similar to LSMSs - conducted as part of the Social Dimensions of Adjustment (SDA) project. UNDP Regional Programme for Africa , the African Development Bank and the World Bank, along with other multilateral and bilateral agencies established the SDA project in 1987. The purpose of ISs is to provide the empirical basis for understanding the response of households to structural adjustment programmes in participating countries. In some cases the World Bank is involved in their administration and implementation, either through the LSMS team or via other units. In Africa , for example, ISs are administered by a separate unit of the World Bank. Unlike LSMS and DHS surveys, ISs are not centrally managed by any of agencies mentioned above and this makes it difficult to access the data sets. However, a comprehensive list, with access to the IS survey questionnaires, is available via the IHSN catalogue.

=> more information on IS surveys

Living Standards Measurement Surveys (LSMS) are multi-topic surveys that are designed for poverty assessment purposes, and are part of the Living Standards Measurement Study, which was initiated in 1980 by the World Bank. Over 100 LSMS surveys were conducted since 1985 in more than 30 developing countries worldwide. LSMS data sets are mostly managed by the LSMS team at the World Bank and are centrally stored in the LSMS database, which is freely accessible to the public and regularly updated.

=>  more information on LSMS surveys

Population and Housing Censuses (PHC) are designed to provide a count of the total population of a nation at a specific point in time and to draw a profile of their socio-economic and demographic characteristics. Individual governments are responsible for the implementation of censuses; however, since the establishment of the first World Programme on Population and Housing Censuses in 1958, a set of international standards has been guiding the overall census process in all countries. The United Nations Statistics Division coordinates the World Programme on PHC. However, PHC data are owned and managed by national governments through their national statistical institutes. Due to strict confidentiality rules that govern the implementation of censuses, raw census data sets are not available to the public, and only the final tabulations can be accessed via a dedicated census webpage of the national statistical agencies. Special tabulations need to be requested from the national statistical offices, or can sometimes be generated through a system of customized tables that may be available to the public via the census webpage. Although raw data are not released to the public, researchers can request census micro data sets, which typically cover a sample that can vary from 2.5% to 10% of the overall census population. For a number of countries census micro data sets are also freely downloadable via the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) International.

=> more information on UN Statistics Division
=> more information on IPUMS surveys

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