Integrated Household Survey 2018

The Sierra Leone Integrated Household Survey (SLIHS) is Sierra Leone’s Living Standard Measurement Survey (LSMS) or household income and expenditure survey (HIES), which is conducted regularly in order to collect useful socio-economic data to support government planning processes. The 2018 SLIHS data collection covered the period January-December 2018, and it was the third round, which followed the 2011 and 2003 rounds. SLIHS is a multi topic household survey that collects detailed household incomes and expenditures, which are the ingredient for the monetary poverty assessment and collects information on education, health, employment, housing, and household assets.

The 2018 SLIHS was designed specifically to provide poverty indicators required for a successful updating of the poverty profile of the country as well as the household expenditure pattern, which serves as a basis for policy making and implementing both the national development plan (NDP) or the poverty reduction strategy paper (PRSP) and sectoral plans such as in education, health and agriculture sectors. The 2018 SLIHS also serves as a baseline for the monitoring of key International benchmarks as contained in the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and African Union Commission (AUC) Agenda 2063 in health, education, environment, income, employment, and gender issues.

The 2018 SLIHS therefore provides for the analysis of household welfare and poverty characteristics; and the results are comparable to previous rounds, at national and sub-national levels. The poverty lines usually computed from the data are:

• The food poverty line represents the minimum amount of money required to afford a food bundle that provides the minimum required caloric intake.
• The total poverty line is the sum of the food (extreme) poverty line, plus an additional allowance for non-food items, and represents the minimum amount of money required to afford a set of basic food and nonfood needs.

Based on these lines and the level of consumption in the household, three definitions of being poor are used:

• A household is classified as absolute poor if its total (food and non-food) consumption is less than the total or absolute poverty line.
• A household is classified as food poor if its food consumption is less than the food poverty line.
• A household is classified as extremely poor if its total (food and non-food) consumption is less than the food poverty line.

The following three poverty measures are used to aggregate poverty across households:

• Incidence of poverty (headcount index). The percent of the household population living below the poverty line.
• Depth of poverty (poverty gap). How far, on average, the population is from the poverty line. In other words, depth of poverty captures the mean percent consumption shortfall of the population relative to the poverty line.
• Severity of poverty (squared poverty gap). Combines the distance separating the poor from the poverty line and the inequality among the poor. Conceptually, poverty severity gives greater weight to those who are farther below the poverty line.

The objectives of the survey are as follows:

• To provide fresh poverty profile and determine new official poverty lines using the new World Bank poverty line of USD 1.90 per day.
• To provide poverty and other indicators to serve as tools for the monitoring and evaluation of the Medium-term national development plan.
• To measure households’ consumption and expenditure at a greater level of disaggregation.
• To provide data for the compilation of National Accounts and computation of the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
• To measure the impact of Ebola on the socio-economic characteristics of the population.