Joint Data Center

JDC Support to Integrating forcibly displaced populations into COVID-19 High Frequency Phone Surveys

In coordination with the COVID-19 High Frequency Phone Survey  work by the World Bank and its partners, the Joint Data Center is supporting the expansion of those efforts to include data collection on forcibly displaced populations in several countries including Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Iraq, and Jordan. The JDC is also supporting the analysis of similar data in Bangladesh and Yemen. With the help of these High Frequency phone Surveys, we can provide insights on the socioeconomic experience of forcibly displaced populations and their hosts during COVID-19. For an example of such insights, see the second issue of the JDC Working Paper Series on the welfare of Forced Displacement titled Answering the Call: Forcibly Displaced Populations During The Pandemic.

The country briefs/reports and anonymized/deidentified data are expected to be able to be shared eventually.

For questions on the JDC’s overall support to the High Frequency Phone Survey (HFPS) work, please contact:

For questions on the individual country HFPS work, please see the country team leads listed in the country descriptions below.

 

Bangladesh

This work follows up on the Cox’s Bazar Panel Survey fielded in March – April 2019 by Yale University and the World Bank. The survey included a representative sample of Rohingya refugee or asylum-seeking households in Cox’s Bazar. In an effort to understand how household proximity to the camp may affect welfare for Bangladeshis living in the Cox’s Bazar district, the survey also includes samples of proximate (“high exposure”) and distal (“low exposure”) hosts.  Subsequent rounds of tracking surveys during the pandemic were implemented via phone interviews in 2020 to monitor issues of work, wages, food security, non-labor income, and coping strategies.

 

See relevant briefs and reports here:

Corresponding team lead:

Burkina Faso

The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to have significant short- and long-term impact on Burkinabe households’ welfare, impacting households through at least three broad channels: (i) the income/employment channel, (ii) the price channel, and (iii) the long-term human capital channel. The World Bank and the National Institute of Statistics and Demography are implementing a HFPS to monitor the negative effects of COVID-19 on households, leveraging the available household phone number in the 2018/19 Enquete Harmonisée sur les Conditions de Vie des Ménages (EHCVM). With the technical and financial support of development partners, including UNHCR, IOM and OCHA, the government has put in place a data base of refugees and IDPs called the CONASUR. This CONASUR database will serve as a sample frame for the additional sub-sample to be added in the High Frequency Phone Survey. The target is to have about 1,500 Forcibly Displaced households in the High Frequency Phone Survey.  Due to delays and challenges in timing, the High Frequency Phone Survey will include the FDP sample for three rounds.

See the brief on this work in English and in French below: 

Corresponding team leads:

Chad:

The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to have significant short- and long-term impacts on Chadian households’ welfare. Most of these impacts are related to both the direct health effect and the containment measures that systematically altered socio-economic activities, resulting in a reduction of income across the board. The World Bank and the National Institute of Statistics, Economic and Demographic Studies (INSEED) partnered to implement a High Frequency Phone Survey to monitor the socio-economic impact of COVID-19 on households, leveraging the available household phone numbers from the 2018/19 Enquete sur les conditions de vie des ménages et le secteur informel (ECOSIT 4). The JDC supported the expansion of the sample of the HFPS to cover refugees in Chad.

See the brief on this work below:

 

Corresponding team lead:

 

Djibouti

To understand and monitor the short and medium-term consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on Djiboutian households, the World Bank is planning planned to conduct several HFPS rounds. Data collection will be carried out by the National Institute of Statistics of Djibouti (INSD). A random sub-sample was drawn from the list of households in the social registry data collected by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Solidarity (MASS) that reported telephone numbers. For the FDP sample, the team intended to combine data collection with that planned for host communities in the last two rounds.  The team worked closely with UNHCR to develop the sampling framework from the UNHCR proGres database which has information on the entire set of refugees and asylum seekers in Djibouti.

See reports on this work here:

Questionnaires: Round 3

Corresponding team lead:

 

Ethiopia

The COVID-19 pandemic and its negative economic effects create a need for timely data and evidence to help monitor and mitigate the social and economic impacts of the crisis and protect the welfare of the least well-off in Ethiopia’s society. To monitor the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Ethiopia’s economy and people, the World Bank Ethiopia team, in collaboration with the government, designed and implemented a High Frequency Phone Survey to monitor the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on households’ welfare in Ethiopia. The data collection started at the end of April 2020 and households are called back every three to four weeks for a total of seven survey rounds to track the impact of the pandemic as it unfolds and inform government action. With the support of the JDC, the team include a survey stratum of refugees in two rounds of the survey in late Fall of 2020.  The sample for the refugee stratum will be drawn in collaboration with UNHCR based on UNHCR’s proGres database. The simple random sample will include refugees with access to a phone for those camps (or countries of origin) with a relatively high phone penetration rate. Importantly, this data was collected immediately prior to the outbreak of violence in the Tigray province.

 

See reports on this work here:

See questionnaires:

Corresponding team lead:

Iraq

The World Food Program (WFP) in Iraq started a mobile phone survey (mVAM) in April 2020 to acquire information on food consumption and access to basic services during the pandemic. In September 2020, this was expanded to a technical collaboration between the WFP and the World Bank, expanding the WFP’s current data collection with five activities. With JDC support, the initiative expanded the household survey to interview a representative sample of IDPs and returning IDP households. The IDP sample includes households that were forcibly displaced by the 2014 ISIS conflict and are still living in places other than their places of habitual residence; the returnee sample will consist of those who were forcibly displaced by the crisis and have now returned to their places of origin.

Read more about this work here.

 

Corresponding Questionnaires: Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Round 4

Corresponding team lead:

 

Jordan

In collaboration with various partners, the World Bank is fielding a survey of Jordanian households drawn from the National Unified Registry in collaboration of the Ministry of Social Development (MoSD). Against this backdrop and integrated into these efforts, JDC funding will support a second survey composed of Syrian refugees planned over three panel waves.  The sample will be randomly drawn from a from the UNHCR proGres database of registered refugees.  The phone surveys of refugees and Jordanians will be paired with a simultaneous, identical face-to-face survey of a comparable sample to test the modality effects of phone versus in person and displaced versus non-displaced.

Report(s) forthcoming 

Corresponding team lead:

Yemen

A number of devastating economic shocks in 2020 have stressed the vulnerable Yemini population.  These shocks include a currency crisis, a decline in humanitarian assistance, the COVID-19 pandemic, and a series of natural disasters. In partnership with the World Food Programme and with the support of the JDC, the World Bank has analyzed monthly socioeconomic phone survey data from the Yemen Mobile Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping survey (mVAM).

See the presentation on this work here.

 COVID-19 and Forced Displacement in the Global South

Corresponding team lead: