Publication:
Design of a Multi-Stage Stratified Sample for Poverty and Welfare Monitoring with Multiple Objectives: A Bangladesh Case Study

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Files in English
English PDF (1.07 MB)
858 downloads
English Text (118.07 KB)
42 downloads
Published
2017-03
ISSN
Date
2017-03-08
Editor(s)
Abstract
This paper describes the design of a multi-stage stratified sample for the Bangladesh Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2016/17. This survey instrument will be used by the Government of Bangladesh to estimate reliable poverty and welfare statistics at three different levels: (i) annual estimates at the district level, (ii) quarterly estimates at the national level, and (iii) annual estimates at the division level for urban and rural areas. The sample for this survey was designed to achieve these three objectives. The paper explains how the three objectives are prioritized and how inconsistencies in achieving more than one objective can be reconciled. Further, the paper modifies the standard formulas to estimate the optimal sample size and the allocation of the sample across strata by explicitly taking into consideration the effect of clustering in the sample.
Link to Data Set
Citation
Ahmed, Faizuddin; Roy, Dipankar; Yanez-Pagans, Monica; Yoshida, Nobuo. 2017. Design of a Multi-Stage Stratified Sample for Poverty and Welfare Monitoring with Multiple Objectives: A Bangladesh Case Study. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 7989. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26239 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
Associated URLs
Associated content
Report Series
Report Series
Other publications in this report series
  • Publication
    Climate and Social Sustainability in Fragility, Conflict, and Violence Contexts
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07) Cuesta Leiva, Jose Antonio; Huff, Connor
    Climate change is widely recognized as a driver of violent conflict, but its broader social effects remain less understood. Ignoring these dimensions risks a vicious cycle where climate policies might undermine socially just adaptation. Evidence is still limited on how climate shocks influence political participation, trust, or migration. This paper helps fill that gap by examining links between climate change, conflict, and social sustainability, with a focus on inclusion, resilience, cohesion, and legitimacy. Using secondary data from 2019–24, the study applies simple correlation-based methods to test three hypotheses on the nature, severity, and composition of these associations. The analysis combines multiple climate impact measures, new conflict classifications, recent social sustainability frameworks, and controls for population and geography. The results reveal strong correlations—not causation—between climate events and contexts of fragility, conflict, and violence. Climate impacts are most pronounced in both national and subnational conflict settings. The study also finds robust links between fragility, conflict, and violence and low levels of social sustainability, reflecting its role as both a driver and consequence of conflict. Some dimensions—such as violent events and insecurity—appear weaker in areas most affected by climate shocks. Two of the hypotheses are supported, and one remains inconclusive.
  • Publication
    The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29) Abalo, Kodzovi; Boehlert, Brent; Bui, Thanh; Burns, Andrew; Castillo, Diego; Chewpreecha, Unnada; Haider, Alexander; Hallegatte, Stephane; Jooste, Charl; McIsaac, Florent; Ruberl, Heather; Smet, Kim; Strzepek, Ken
    Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.
  • Publication
    Institutional Capacity for Policy Implementation: An Analytical Framework
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07) Kim, Galileu; Kumar, Tanu; Ramalho, Rita; Russell, Stuart
    State capacity is an important prerequisite for policy implementation, yet at the country level it is difficult to measure, assess, and reform. This paper proposes a focus on institutional capacity: the ability of public institutions to implement the specific policy mandates for which they are responsible. Based on a review of existing literature, the paper defines the different dimensions that compose institutional capacity and groups them into two cross-cutting categories: organizational dimensions (personnel, financial resources, information systems, and management practices) and governance dimensions (transparency, independence, and accountability). The paper proposes measures for organizational and governance dimensions using existing data, shows intra-institutional variation of these measures within countries, and discusses how new data could be collected for better measurement of these concepts. Finally, the paper illustrates how the framework can be used to diagnose the sources of common problems related to weak policy implementation.
  • Publication
    South Africa’s Fragmented Cities: The Unequal Burden of Labor Market Frictions
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-08) Baez, Javier E.; Kshirsagar, Varun
    Using high-resolution administrative, census, and satellite data, this paper shows that South African cities are characterized by spatial mismatches between where people live and where jobs are located, relative to 20 global peers. Areas within 5 kilometers of commercial centers have 9,300 fewer residents per square kilometer than expected, which is 60 percent below the global median. Poor, dense neighborhoods are most affected. In Johannesburg, a 10-percentile increase in distance from the nearest business hub corresponds to a 3.7-percentile drop in asset wealth (a proxy of household wellbeing) and 4.9-percentile drop in employment. In Cape Town, the declines are 4.0 and 3.7 percentiles, respectively. Employment is 87 percent lower in the poorest decile than the richest in Johannesburg and 61 percent lower in Cape Town. These findings suggest that South Africa’s spatial organization of people and economic activity constrains agglomeration and reinforces inequality. This methodology provides a scalable and standardized data-driven framework to analyze spatial accessibility and agglomeration frictions in complex, data-constrained urban systems.
  • Publication
    Investment in Emerging and Developing Economies
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07) Adarov, Amat; Kose, M. Ayhan; Vorisek, Dana
    The world faces a pressing challenge to meet key development objectives amid slowing growth and rising macroeconomic and geopolitical risks. With the number of job seekers rising rapidly, infrastructure shortfalls continuing to be large, and climate costs mounting, the case for a significant investment push has never been stronger. Yet the capacity to respond in many emerging markets and developing economies has eroded. Since the global financial crisis, investment growth has slowed to about half its pace in the 2000s, with both public and private investment weakening. Foreign direct investment inflows—a critical source of capital, technology, and managerial know-how—have also fallen sharply and become increasingly concentrated, leaving low-income countries with only a marginal share. The risks of further retrenchment are significant, as trade tensions, policy uncertainty, and elevated debt levels continue to weigh on investment. Reigniting momentum will require ambitious domestic reforms to strengthen institutions, rebuild macro-fiscal stability, and deepen trade and investment integration—the foundations of a supportive business climate. At the same time, international cooperation is indispensable. A renewed commitment to a predictable system of cross-border trade and investment flows, combined with scaled-up financial support and sustained technical assistance, is essential to help emerging markets and developing economies—especially low-income countries and economies in fragile and conflict situations—bridge financing gaps and implement the domestic reforms needed to restore investment as an engine of growth, jobs, and development.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Publication
    International Comparisons of Poverty in South Asia
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-12) Islam, Tonmoy; Newhouse, David; Yanez-Pagans, Monica
    This paper explores the methodological differences underlying the construction of the national consumption aggregates that are used to estimate international poverty rates for all countries in the South Asia region, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The analysis draws on a regional dataset of standardized consumption aggregates to assess the sensitivity of international poverty rates to the items included in national consumption aggregates. A key feature of the standardized aggregate is that it includes the reported value of housing rent for urban Indian homeowners. Using the standardized consumption aggregates reduces the international poverty rate in South Asia by 1.3 percentage points, or about 18.5 million people. Comparing standardized and non-standardized monetary welfare indicators to other nonmonetary indicators suggests that the latter are more consistent with the standardized consumption aggregates. Overall, the results strongly suggest that harmonizing the construction of welfare measures, particularly the treatment of imputed rent, can meaningfully improve the accuracy of international poverty comparisons.
  • Publication
    Correcting Sampling and Nonresponse Bias in Phone Survey Poverty Estimation Using Reweighting and Poverty Projection Models
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2024-01-03) Zhang, Kexin; Takamatsu, Shinya; Yoshida, Nobuo
    To monitor the evolution of household living conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Bank conducted COVID-19 High-Frequency Phone Surveys in around 80 countries. Phone surveys are cheap and easy to implement, but they have some major limitations, such as the absence of poverty data, sampling bias due to incomplete telephone coverage in many developing countries, and frequent nonresponses to phone interviews. To overcome these limitations, the World Bank conducted pilots in 20 countries where the Survey of Wellbeing via Instant and Frequent Tracking, a rapid poverty monitoring tool, was adopted to estimate poverty rates based on 10 to 15 simple questions collected via phone interviews, and where sampling weights were adjusted to correct the sampling and nonresponse bias. This paper examines whether reweighting procedures and the Survey of Wellbeing via Instant and Frequent Tracking methodology can eliminate the bias in poverty estimation based on the COVID-19 High-Frequency Phone Surveys. Experiments using artificial phone survey samples show that (i) reweighting procedures cannot fully eliminate bias in poverty estimates, as previous research has demonstrated, but (ii) when combined with Survey of Wellbeing via Instant and Frequent Tracking poverty projections, they effectively eliminate bias in poverty estimates and other statistics.
  • Publication
    Second-Stage Sampling for Conflict Areas
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-03) Himelein, Kristen; Eckman, Stephanie; Murray, Siobhan; Bauer, Johannes
    The collection of survey data from war zones or other unstable security situations is vulnerable to error because conflict often limits the implementation options. Although there are elevated risks throughout the process, this paper focuses specifically on challenges to frame construction and sample selection. The paper uses simulations based on data from the Mogadishu High Frequency Survey Pilot to examine the implications of the choice of second-stage selection methodology on bias and variance. Among the other findings, the simulations show the bias introduced by a random walk design leads to the underestimation of the poverty headcount by more than 10 percent. The paper also discusses the experience of the authors in the time required and technical complexity of the associated back-office preparation work and weight calculations for each method. Finally, as the simulations assume perfect implementation of the design, the paper also discusses practicality, including the ease of implementation and options for remote verification, and outlines areas for future research and pilot testing.
  • Publication
    Water and Sanitation in Dhaka Slums
    (Taylor and Francis, 2020-07-16) Haque, Sabrina; Yanez-Pagans, Monica; Arias-Granada, Yurani; Joseph, George
    Slum populations are commonly characterized to have poorly developed water and sanitation systems and speculated to access services through informal channels. However, there are limited representative profiles of water and sanitation services in slums, making it difficult to prioritize interventions that will make services safer for residents. This cross-sectional study examines quality and provision of access to water and sanitation services in government slums across Dhaka, Bangladesh. Access is overall high but is subject to quality issues related to safety, reliability, and liability. Services are often operated by informal middlemen at various stages of provision.
  • Publication
    Water and Sanitation in Dhaka Slums
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-08) Arias-Granada, Yurani; Haque, Sabrina S.; Joseph, George; Yanez-Pagans, Monica
    Urban slum residents often have worse health outcomes compared with other urbanites and even their rural counterparts. This suggests that slum residents do not always benefit from the "urban advantage" of enjoying better access to health-promoting services. Limited access to water and sanitation services in slums could contribute to poor health of slum residents. In Bangladesh, these services generally are not delivered through formal utilities, but rather through well-functioning informal markets that are operated by middlemen and local providers. This paper analyzes a household survey to examine living conditions and quality of access to water and sanitation services in small-, medium-, and large-sized slums across Dhaka, Bangladesh. The analysis finds that access to water and sanitation services is overall quite high, but these services are subject to important quality issues related to safety, reliability, and liability. Although water access is nearly universal, water services are often interrupted or sometimes inaccessible. Sanitation is commonly shared, with the average ratio being 16 households to one facility. When considering fecal sludge management, the study finds that only 2 percent of these households have access to the Joint Monitoring Programme's conceptualization of "safely managed sanitation." The paper also finds strong evidence that water and sanitation services are operated by middlemen at various stages of service provision such as installation, management, and payment collection. The paper provides a snapshot of the differential quality in access to these services based on the monetary welfare level of the household. The snapshot shows that access to water and sanitation services is highly correlated to per capita household consumption levels, although quality remains low overall within slums. Overall, it is likely that the informality of water and sanitation services may exacerbate social and environmental risk factors for poor health and well-being.

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

  • Publication
    Digital Africa
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13) Begazo, Tania; Dutz, Mark Andrew; Blimpo, Moussa
    All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.
  • Publication
    Regional Poverty and Inequality Update: Latin America and the Caribbean, October 2025
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-10-23) World Bank
    This brief summarizes recent facts related to poverty and inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) using the latest wave of harmonized household surveys from the Socio-Economic Database for LAC (SEDLAC). This brief was produced by the Poverty Global Practice in the LAC Region of the World Bank.
  • Publication
    Ukraine Country Environmental Analysis
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-01) World Bank
    The objective of the Country Environmental Analysis (CEA) is to assess the adequacy and performance of the policy, legal, and institutional framework for environmental management in Ukraine, in light of the decentralization process of environmental governance and wider reform objectives, and to provide recommendations to government to address the key gaps identified. Ukraine is the second largest country in Europe and has a population of 43 million, the majority of whom live in urban areas. It is a lower middle income country, with the services, industry and agriculture sectors being main contributors to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Ukraine faces a number of environmental challenges, as identified in its National Environmental Strategy 2020 (NES). Key among these are: air pollution; quality of water resources and land degradation; solid waste management; biodiversity loss; human health issues associated with environmental risk factors; in addition to climate change. The scope of Ukrainian environmental legislation is quite broad and comprehensive (more than 300 legal acts) and covers most areas of environmental protection and natural resources management. However, the environmental legislation faces a number of weaknesses:The environmental legislation is largely declaratory in nature and does not have all the essential enforcement mechanisms for the implementation of legal acts and international agreements; Many of the acts are not coordinated with each other; and Legislation undergoes limited analysis of its impact—for example, no in-depth analysis such as Regulatory Impact Analysis is conducted for proposed pieces of legislation.
  • Publication
    Gender-Based Violence Country Profile
    (Washington, DC, 2023-06-01) World Bank
    Honduras has a small and informal economy that is predominantly agricultural, but its strategic location, solid industrial base, ample resources, and young population indicate potential for inclusive and resilient economic growth. Despite the growth, Honduras remains one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the region. Honduras has one of the highest rates of violent deaths of women in the world, by 2021, there were reported 318 violent deaths of women. Honduras is both a source and transit country for human trafficking, with women being the most affected by it. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the situation, resulting in an increase in reported cases of domestic and intrafamily violence.
  • Publication
    Thailand Monthly Economic Monitor, October 2025
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-10-22) World Bank
    Fiscal conditions remained stable, with a modest widening of the deficit to 3.1 percent of GDP. New stimulus measures are expected to support short-term demand without breaching the public debt ceiling. Inflation stayed negative, reflecting lower energy and food prices amid subdued domestic demand. The central bank kept the policy rate unchanged, citing limited policy space. Thailand’s growth momentum has slowed further as manufacturing activity and services weakened as projected. Tourism remained subdued, largely due to fewer Chinese visitors. Goods exports also slowed as earlier front-loaded orders faded, particularly in agriculture and industrial goods. The Thai baht depreciated in early October as the US dollar appreciated and the current account turned negative.