Daily Consumption and Household Level Surveys
Economists Rohini Pande, Giorgia Barboni, and Erica Field collected and harmonized household-level data from government labor force surveys for their recent working paper “Rural Banks Can Reduce Poverty: Experimental Evidence from 870 Indian Villages.” The full set includes data on 75 million people in 45 countries over two consecutive quarters.
Now the team has made the dataset openly available. The data allow researchers to observe how individuals move between employment states – self-employment, wage work, unemployment, inactivity – and how those flows vary by gender, education level, occupation, and other variables.
This is an ongoing project and the dataset will be updated annually as governments release further data. Current collections cover the Covid-19 crisis and will be added in the near future. Eventually the dataset may shine light on the effects of Covid-19 on labor force participation, allowing researchers to observe how labor market dynamics vary and how the economic recovery progresses across countries.