Abstract
The LSMS Household Business Indicators for Sub-Saharan Africa (LSMS-HBI) is a harmonized dataset of indicators measuring household business activity and employment across five Sub-Saharan African countries: Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda. The dataset was constructed from existing nationally representative household surveys — specifically, the Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) panel surveys — and covers the two most recently conducted survey waves per country, enabling both cross-country comparisons and temporal analyses.
The primary purpose of the dataset is to provide researchers, policymakers, and data users with a consistent, comparable set of measures on the prevalence, characteristics, financing, formalization, constraints, and financial performance of household businesses, as well as the structure, demographics, and earnings of the broader workforce. The indicators are designed to support analysis of the role of household businesses in economic development, job creation, and household welfare in Sub-Saharan Africa.