Mortality estimation Afghanistan - National Risk and Vulnerability Survey 2011-2012, Living Conditions Survey NRVA 2011 12 report

173 ANNEX VII UPDATING THE POVERTY LINE USING NRVA 2011-12 ANNEX VII UPDATING THE POVERTY LINE USING NRVA 2011-12 VII.1 Methodology The oficial poverty line for Afghanistan was set in 2007-08, using information available from the National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment NRVA survey. In particular, adhering to international best practices, the poverty line was set following the Cost of Basic Needs CBN method and it represents the level of per capita consumption at which the members of a household can be expected to meet their “basic needs” in terms of both food a and non-food consumption. 1 The measurement of poverty based on the NRVA 2011-12 is obtained by updating the poverty line set using the NRVA 2007-08. Updating the original poverty line, as opposed to setting a new one, has the advantage of preserving the comparability of poverty estimates over time, thereby allowing an analysis of changes in poverty. In particular, for poverty estimates to be comparable over time between the NRVA 07-08 baseline and the newly released NRVA 11-12, the measure of welfare used to rank households i.e. consumption aggregate should be constructed following the same methodology used for the baseline; the “updated” poverty line should be estimated to capture the same level of wellbeing identiied by original poverty line, but evaluated at the prices obtained from the current survey. Thus, while in effect updating the poverty line entails the deinition of a new poverty line for the 2011-12 survey round, the “poverty line basket” is taken to be pre-determined. 2 VII.2 Effective sample size The effective sample size for the poverty analysis is 19,598 households spread across 32 of the 34 provinces in Afghanistan. Two of the provinces, Helmand and Khost, were dropped from the sample used for poverty estimation due to problems of data quality, which emerged in the measurement of the consumption aggregate and, most notably, in the measurement of food component of the aggregate. 3 VII.3 Building the consumption aggregate using NRVA 2011-12 The process of constructing the consumption aggregate matches the one used for setting the poverty line using information from NRVA 2007-08. In particular, the same consumption aggregate subcomponents were deined, namely i food component, ii non-food component, iii consumer durables, and iv housing. In what follows, we provide a brief methodological overview on how each of these subcomponents were constructed, highlighting comparability issues, if any, between 2007-08 and 2011-12. For a more detailed description of the methodology followed in 2007-08, the reader should refer to Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Ministry of Economy and the World Bank 2010. 4 VII.3.1 Food component Like the previous round, the NRVA 2011-12 includes a very detailed food consumption section in which female respondents are asked about household consumption quantitiesunits consumed of 91 food items, organized into nine food groups, over the past 7 days. 5 Food consumption data include food both bought, home produced, as well as food that might have been acquired by means of non-monetary transactions such as gifts and food aid. The nominal expenditure on food consumption was obtained combining food items’ consumption with their price information coming from the District Price Survey DPS module which was administered in conjunction with the 2011-12 NRVA. 6 1 The oficial national average poverty line for Afghanistan is Afs 1,253 per person per month. This represents the typical cost of attaining 2,100 calories per person per day and of meeting some basic non-food needs, in terms of fall 2007 prices from urban areas of central Afghanistan. The poverty line relects regional differences in the cost of living, and also accounts for inlation over the time of the survey. See Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and World Bank 2010. 2 The oficial national average poverty line for Afghanistan is Afs 1,253 per person per month. This represents the typical cost of attaining 2,100 calories per person per day and of meeting some basic non-food needs, in terms of fall 2007 prices from urban areas of central Afghanistan. The poverty line relects regional differences in the cost of living, and also accounts for inlation over the time of the survey. See Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and World Bank 2010. 3 The same two provinces were dropped from the analysis of food security chapter 7. 4 Document accessible online at: http:cso.gov.afContentMediaDocumentsCSO-WB_Tech-Report-Pov_v421162011121045651553325325.pdf 5 Food items are organized into 9 food groups, namely: i bread and cereals; ii meat and ish; iii milk, cheese and eggs; iv oil and fat; v vegetables; vi fruits and nuts; vii sugar and sweets; viii beverages, and ix spices. 6 The District Price Survey module covers the price of all food items in the consumption module and a few other items such as grains and fuels. DPS data were collected during NRVA survey visits to the PSUs. Team supervisors were responsible to visit the markets of the respective districts or nahia in urban areas and to administer the survey. The identiication of the relevant market to be surveyed and its location – whether it would be in the district headquarters, provincial capital, or in a neighboring district – were guided by key informant interviews within each community. Price information was matched to household level food consumption by location and month of interview. 174 ANNEX VII UPDATING THE POVERTY LINE USING NRVA 2011-12 For each of the nine food categories, NRVA 2011-12, like NRVA 2007-08, allows for a residual – “other” – food category item. Lacking a price for these residual categories, proxy prices were deined for each “other” category to be the median by month and district of the prices of items in each food group as done for the consumption aggregate in 2007-08. 7 A inal component of total food consumption is the total value of meals consumed outside the household, e.g. in restaurants, prepared food purchased from the marketplace, etc. The NRVA 2011-12 collects this information in section 10 of the Male Household Questionnaire by asking “What has the household spent in the last 30 days for food and drinks consumed outside the home?”, and, accordingly, the total value of food away from home was used in the imputation of total food consumption. A comparative analysis of food consumption patterns from the two survey rounds shows a reduction over time in the relative share of staple food bread and cereals over total 8 , accompanied by an increase in share of relatively more nutritious food items such as meat and ish, diary and vegetables Figure VII.1. Figure VII.1: Total food consumption aggregate, by food group, and by survey year in percentages 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 NRVA 2007 -08 NRVA 2011 -12 Other Vegeta blesfruit Oilsfa t Mea tfish a nd da iry products Brea d a nd cerea ls VII.3.2 Non-food component Total expenditure on non-food items covers a wide and heterogeneous set of items such as expenditure on energy, education, transportation and clothing and was constructed by aggregating expenditures on goods and services from various sections of the NRVA. 9 Changes in the measurement of health expenditure in survey instruments made it impossible to build a comparable estimate for health across the two survey rounds. As a result, health expenditure is not included in the non-food component of the consumption aggregate. 10 Consumer durables Following baseline methodology and international best practice, “rental equivalent” of consumer durables are included in the consumption aggregate, to relect the opportunity cost of money tied up in durable goods and their lifetime and depreciation. 11 As done in the previous survey round, asset life is assumed to be 10 years with a lat-line depreciation of 10 percent per year, and an interest rate 4 percent, implying the effective discount rate of 14 percent. 7 For details on the rationale for the deinitions for each category, refer to Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and World Bank 2010. 8 The share of breads and cereals in total consumption declined from 43 to 33 while the shares of all other categories increased. 9 Expenditures such as education, transportation and clothing were reported on an annual basis, and converted into monthly values. Energy expenditures cover all sources: electricity, gas, oil, irewood, charcoal, coal, straw, ping, and manure. Following the 2007-08 approach and standard best practice, the non-food aggregate does not include three categories of expenditure, namely: 1 lumpy expenditures, 2 investment expenditures, and 3 expenditures not related to household well-being. 10 In order to produce comparable estimates of poverty over time, the 2007-08 consumption aggregate had to be recomputed to exclude medical expenditure and the baseline poverty line re-estimated to relect this change in non-food consumption. 11 Durable items include: refrigerator, stove gas balloon, sewing machine, iron, radiotape recorder, TV, VCRDVD player, satellite phone, electric fan, bicycle, motorcycle, car, tractorthresher, mobile phones, carpets khalin, gilim, blankets, and kitchen utensils.