Household Survey Data Updates

EPDC has updated its database with some of the most recent household survey data published by DHS and MICS.

EPDC’s database includes data from large-scale household surveys in over 220 countries and territories world-wide. The most recent updates include 2016 surveys from DHS for Angola, Malawi, and Tanzania, as well as the 2014 DHS survey for Bangladesh. In addition, 2015 MICS surveys for Kazakhstan and Mexico, as well as 2014 MICS surveys for Cameroon, El Salvador, Guinea-Bissau, Swaziland and Guyana were added.

The DHS and MICS surveys, while primarily designed to capture health data, also collect key education data points which may be of interest to researchers, including attendance and grade level attended for school-aged children and young adults, as well as overall educational attainment for adults and frequently, the literacy of men and women in the household. Many surveys include two years of attendance data and pre-primary attendance as well.

The microdata from these surveys is available to researchers online, but to increase accessibility of data, EPDC cleans and shares the education portions of these household surveys on its website for the education research community. More information on this project, and the structure of the data shared on our website, can be found in the “Data” section of EPDC’s website.

Data is available to download into as csv or xls files; searches can also be saved for later use ont he webiste. You can also visualize the data without downloading it using EPDC’s built in tools on our website. For example, using some of the recently updated DHS data for Angola, it is easy to quickly visualize the differences in post-secondary educational attainment for women in rural and urban areas.

Visualizations can also be customized, with the option to change axis titles, graph titles, and axis values. For example, in the below image, the graph x-axis was updated to range from 0 to 100% to better show the low completion rates overall for all students.

Other visualizations include options for line graphs, scatter plots, and maps.

EPDC updates its database with the latest household survey data annually. To stay updated on the databases’ available resources and new features, follow EPDC on Twitter @FHI360EPDC.