Rapid Assessment Survey of the Benazir Income Support Program 2009
Pakistan, 2009
Identification
PAK_2009_BISP_v01_M
Rapid Assessment Survey of the Benazir Income Support Program 2009
| Name | Country code |
|---|---|
| Pakistan | PAK |
Other Household Survey [hh/oth]
During the second half of 2008, the Government of Pakistan established the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) as the country's main safety net mechanism. The short term objective of the program is to cushion the adverse impact of the food, fuel and financial crises on the poor, but its broader objective is to meet the redistributive goals of the country by providing a minimum income support package to the chronic poor and those affected by future shocks. The Program provides cash transfers of Rs.1000 [$12] per month to eligible families. In order to quickly launch the program, parliamentarians (Members of the National Assembly and Senators) were asked to identify 8,000 beneficiary households each on a prescribed form, which collected information on names, national ID card, and household income. BISP is a national program that covers all provinces of the country, Azad Jamnu and Kashmir (AJK) and Northern Areas.
In December 2008, the Government of Pakistan (GoP) decided to improve the existing targeting mechanism of BISP through the adoption of a poverty scorecard (“proxy means test” based targeting) that would be used for the selection of beneficiaries. The scorecard roll-out started during April 2009 in 16 districts. The GoP intended to complete the national roll-out by the end of 2010.
Expecting there would be a transition from the Parliamentarian selected beneficiaries to poverty scorecard identified beneficiaries after the poverty scorecard information was collected and cut-off scores were identified, the World Bank team and the GoP decided to launch a BISP rapid assessment survey with the primary objective to examine the overlap between the poverty scorecard identified beneficiaries and Parliamentarian identified beneficiaries in order to inform the policy makers on the potential transition mechanisms. In addition, the rapid assessment survey would also inform the BISP application process and challenges in delivery mechanisms as well as the how BISP beneficiaries tend to spend the cash transfer received.
Sample survey data [ssd]
Households
Individuals
Scope
The survey covered the following :
- Individual level demographics
- Education
- Employment
- Household's language, ethnicity and religion
- Attitudes towards schooling
- Political activism
- Disability
- Consumption
- Poverty
- BISP awareness/process
- Uses of BISP benefits
Coverage
The main survey was conducted in 15 randomly selected districts of Pakistan
Producers and sponsors
| Name | Affiliation |
|---|---|
| Xiaohui Hou | World Bank |
| Cem Mete | World Bank |
| Mansoora Rashid | World Bank |
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| World Bank | Funding |
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| World Bank Social Protection Team | Technical Support |
Sampling
The sampling Survey for the Rapid Assessment of Parliamentarian selected beneficiaries was conducted in the two stages: a test phase stages and the main survey.
1.Test Phase.A test of the planned survey was conducted by IDS in May 2009. The test was based on a random sample of 101 beneficiaries in two districts Nowshera (NWFP) and Rajanpur (Punjab). The 101 beneficiaries came from 101 households composed of 613 household members. The results and lessons from the test-phase were used to refine the final survey questionnaires.
2.Main Survey. The main survey was conducted in 15 randomly selected districts of Pakistan, during the months of August and September before Ramadan.
The sample beneficiaries were selected from the list of the Parliamentarian identified beneficiaries provided by the National Database and Registration Authority's (NADRA). The sample was drawn from the NADRA computer records in April, 2009. There were 1,660,584 existing beneficiaries in that record, composed of 46.23 percent from Punjab, 26.04 from Sindh, 18.35 percent from NWFP, 6.08 percent from Baluchistan, 2.38 percent from FATA, 0.73 percent from Islamabad and 0.14 percent from Northern areas.
The study used the probability to Proportion to Size method to obtain a sample as representative as possible with the sample size of 2,500 households. For this purpose a randomly selected sample of 5680 beneficiaries' names, addresses, NIC numbers and names of spouses/fathers was provided by NADRA for the 15 selected Tehsils in the 13 districts of the four Provinces, and Islamabad in the Federal Capital and Muzafarabad in the Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
The total number of Districts/Tehsils was purposively decided on the basis of an eventually representative sample size to capture the large diversity in levels of development across districts and the resources available. The 13 districts from the four Provinces were then allocated to roughly represent the relative share of the beneficiaries from each Province in the NADRA records on that day. As such 7 districts on Punjab, 3 in Sindh, 2 in NWFP and 1 in Baluchistan were selected.
The literature on Poverty in Pakistan divides provinces into distinct poverty or deprivation bands. For example, Punjab, is looked upon as three regional disparity bands i.e. Northern Punjab (best off), central Punjab (moderately well off) and southern Punjab (worst off). The seven districts of Punjab represent this classification with the number of districts selected in each poverty band being selected on the basis of the share of each region in the population of Punjab. As such, Attack was chosen from the North Punjab, Rajanpur was chosen from the South, and the remaining was chosen from the Center to represent the region as moving from North to South i.e from Sargodha to Faisalabad to Vehari to Multan to Bahawalpur. The same rationale applies to other provinces. For example, in Sindh province, the selected districts ranged from Karachi (the most developed) to Larkana (deprived but politically privileged) to Sanghar (most deprived). In NWFP province, Nowshera is amongst the least deprived in NWFP and Karak is one of the most deprived. Similarly, Muzafarabad was chosen to represent AJK and Islamabad to represent the Federal Area.
In Baluchistan, the unrest and law and order situation made survey almost impossible except in Quetta where a small sample was selected.
The 13 districts in the four provinces for which this list of beneficiaries was selected were chosen to represent 1) the total number of districts in each province, 2) the regional level of deprivation in each province (based on existing literature, districts in each province in Pakistan are grouped by levels of poverty - for example Punjab has three groups namely North (low poverty), central (higher poverty) and Southern (highest poverty) and 3) the share of beneficiaries in each district. One district was selected in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Islamabad Capital territory was selected as a stand alone.The selected districts represent 70 Members of the National Assembly and 143 members of the Provincial Assembly. There are 2 designated Senate seats for Islamabad while the other Senate seats are allocated on no regional criteria. Having selected the districts, one tehsil in each district was drawn randomly. However, the list of beneficiaries provided by NADRA did not include any coding of addresses by Union Council. The Unions Council names were therefore manually coded into the information on the beneficiaries. From this list sample UCs were designated in each tehsil in such a way that at least a minimum of 10 beneficiaries would be covered in a particular sample UC.
Sample UCs were selected using Probability proportionate to Size (PPS) method of selection. Beneficiaries in each UC will be treated as measure of size. Due to nature of the Survey and to avoid unnecessary field problems as already stated UCs with 10+ beneficiaries were selected in the sample. However, in case if in any Tehsil where the number of UCs/Beneficiaries is small, the UCs with less than 10 beneficiaries were also selected.
Sample beneficiaries to be covered from each sample UC in a Tehsil will be in proportion to the size of the sample UCs.
Beneficiaries in a sample UC were selected by Simple Random Sample method of selection. In case if a sample beneficiary is not traceable then subsequent beneficiary in the list of beneficiaries of that UC will be selected as replacement.
The issue of replacement HHs in case a HH could not be traced due to incorrect address required clarification. After exhaustive deliberations with the World Bank team, it was agreed that the sample size would be increased to 2595. Out of the sample of 2,595 households (HHs), a total of 2,540 HHs were initially successfully enumerated before the Eid break. The enumeration teams could not reach 55 HHs. These 55 HHs were later verified / enumerated after the break due to Ramazan and Eid holidays. Post Eid all 2595 HHs were successfully enumerated. Out of the 2,595 HHs enumerated, the enumeration teams, in consultation with their field supervisors and the designated IDS supervisors, had to drop 347 HHs. The reasons for dropping these HHS are discussed in detail subsequently. In addition to these 347 dropped households (for whom both female and male questionnaires were not filled), there are 78 households for whom only female questionnaires were filled as either there were no male member in the HH or male members, even after three visits to the HH (refer to table 7 of the BISP Rapid Assessment Report for sample summary).
Out of the sample of 2,595 households (HHs), a total of 2,540 HHs were initially successfully enumerated before the eid break. The enumeration teams could not reach 55 HHs. These 55 HHs were later verified / enumerated after the break due to Ramadan and Eid holidays. Post Eid all 2595 HHs were successfully enumerated.
Out of the 2,595 HHs enumerated, the enumeration teams, in consultation with their field supervisors and the designated Innovative Development Strategies (Pvt.) Ltd.(IDS) supervisors, had to drop 347 HHs. The reasons for dropping these HHS are discussed in detail subsequently. In addition to these 347 dropped households (for whom both female and male questionnaires were not filled), there are 78 households for whom only female questionnaires were filled as either there were no male member in the HH or male members, even after three visits to the HH.
The reasons for dropping these HHS were :
-
Address Exists but Beneficiary Does not Exist: In 55.3% (192) of the cases, a household was dropped because the beneficiary's name was not consistent with the address sent to the supervisors ( See report (external resources) - Table 9). Mostly this happened in instances where;
a) The beneficiary had reportedly shifted to another location (96)
b) The beneficiary did not live at the address (67), or
c) The beneficiary had died (14) -
Address was not Found: Table 9 shows that in 110 (31%) of the cases, the household was dropped as the address given to the supervisors could not be found. This happened in cases where;
a) The address was incomplete (24) or incorrect (39), or
b) The address was not found due to some other reason (32). For instance, in rural areas where home addresses are usually not clearly defined in terms of house number, street, mohalla, etc, some households could not be traced even after seeking help from the local postman and/or a local knowledgeable person. -
Beneficiary was not Available: In 40 (12%) of the cases, the household was dropped because the beneficiary could not be located (Table 9) either because she was out of town (10) or she was in town but could not be found in three visits to the household .
-
Beneficiary Refused: Lastly, a total of 5 households (or 1.1% of the total dropped HHs) were dropped because the beneficiary refused to be interviewed.
Survey instrument
The BISP Rapid Assessment survey was undertaken to analyze the overlap between the Parliamentarian selected beneficiaries and the Poverty Scorecard selected beneficiaries; and whether there are some consistent patterns on the overlap across provinces. The survey also aimed to better understand the Parlimentarian beneficiary selection process with a view to inform the grievance/redressal procedures. Against this backdrop, a household survey was administered to a random sample of beneficiaries (about 2500 beneficiary households) selected from the NADRA database. The survey consisted of 6 main modules to collect the necessary information. A brief summary for each module is provided below.
- Household Roster. The survey starts with a household roster which includes individual level questions on basic demographics such age, gender, marital status, etc. In addition, individual level information on basic education (i.e. literacy, highest class completed, etc.) and employment is also collected and can be categorized under this module. The employment questions were adapted from the Pakistan Social and Living Standard Measurement Survey (PSLM) 2007/08. However, since the employment status of household members at the time of the application (for BISP benefits) is more of an interest for this study, the focus is on employment for that reference period. This reference period may vary among households and is also among the information collected in the survey. The employment section also collects basic information on current employment status.
Information about the beneficiary household's language, ethnicity, religion along with information on attitudes towards schooling and the political activism are collected at the end of the questionnaire, but can be categorized under the basic household information and hence are summarized under the household roster module.
- Disability. This module includes a short set of questions on disability that the UN Washington Group has developed, tested, and now recommends for inclusion in each country's population census. This is a reduced set of questions given the very limited space on a census questionnaire. These questions have been extensively tested in a wide range of countries and have proved to be robust across cultures. The information collected from this module will be used to examine the relation of Parliamentarian selected beneficiaries and poverty scorecard selected beneficiaries in relation to the household disability profiles.
3 Consumption. The full consumption module from PSLM 2007/08 is included in the questionnaire in order to determine the true poverty status of the beneficiary
household. The full consumption module includes expenditures on food items, nondurable goods and services, and durable goods and services exactly as they are listed in PSLM 2007/08. The information collected from the consumption module will be used in generating the per capita consumption for the household which in turn will determine the beneficiary household's poverty status.
-
Poverty Scorecard. The Government of Pakistan adopted a poverty scorecard (“proxy means test” based targeting) in order to improve the existing targeting mechanism of BISP. A poverty scorecard is a targeting tool that includes a limited number of simple indicators that correlate well with poverty. This module collects information about the variables that will be (is) used in determining the eligibility for BISP once rolled out nationally (in 16 test phase districts). The poverty scorecard form contains only ten questions, most of which require a simple yes/no answer, or the selection of one answer from a set of simple choices. The information collected in this module will determine whether the beneficiary household would have qualified under the new poverty scorecard based selection, which in turn will help determine the overlap with the parliamentarian based selection.
-
BISP Awareness/Process. This module includes questions on the initial awareness of the beneficiaries about BISP in general and questions on the application/verification/payment process. The idea is to better understand the application/verification/payment process which in turn may help in the design of grievance/redressal procedures and also help in improving the payment mechanism. The specific questions include: where the form was obtained, where it was verified, how much money was received through postman/post office/bank etc. This module also collects information about the benefits/assistance received from other Government programs (i.e. Zakat, Punjab food support program in Punjab, Bait-ul Maal etc.) in the last 12 months.
-
Uses of BISP Benefits. This module explores how the beneficiaries would spend the cash transfers and who would make the decision on how to spend. As cash is fungible, the question to elicit how the extra money has been spent was framed as how much more was spent on a particular item since the household started receiving the benefit. Who makes the decision on how to spend the benefit is also of interest as BISP benefit is given to the ever-married female. This question is asked in a straightforward way: first asking who makes the decisions on how to spend the cash transfers (name and id code); and then asking for a ranking among those to determine whether one has more power than the other (i.e. husband and wife may decide together but husband may have more say etc.)
Data collection
| Start | End |
|---|---|
| 2009-08 | 2009-09 |
| Name |
|---|
| Pakistan Innovative Development Strategies (Pvt.) Ltd. |
In addition to the problem of dropped households, the enumeration teams had to contend with the following set of difficulties:
a) During the conduct of the survey, the combination of extreme heat and lack of electricity caused some enumerators to drop out either immediately after the training phase or at different stages of the survey. In the former case, new enumerators were hired and trained immediately, while in the latter case, the remaining teams had to share the extra work load.
b) The enumeration teams faced extreme hostility at some locations. For instance, in District Nawshera, the local postman discouraged people from granting interview to IDS teams. Similarly, in District Karak, some households refused to grant interview and were blatantly hostile.
Given the proportionately large rate of dropped households in Karachi, Muzaffarabad and Quetta, the supervisors of these districts were asked to revisit all the dropped HHs. Supervisors were instructed to focus on those HHs that were initially dropped because their addresses could not be found. Such HHs constitute 36% and 61% of dropped HHs in Karachi and Quetta respectively. Additionally, in all districts, IDS hired the services of an independent third party to randomly verify the veracity of data vis-à-vis dropped HHs.
Data processing
The data were entered in SPSS format using the specially designed data entry program. The data were saved in nine SPSS as .sav files. These are:
- Main_I.sav (Female Questionnaire: Pages 1-2)
- Roster_J.sav (Female Questionnaire: Pages 3-8)
- Exp_f_c.sav (Female Questionnaire: Pages 9-21; Male Questionnaire: Pages 3-4 )
- Exp_y_g.sav (Female Questionnaire: Pages 21-28; Male Questionnaire: Pages 5-12)
- S5_b.sav (Female Questionnaire: Pages 29-36; Male Questionnaire: Pages 13-20)
- S6_2431_b.sav (Female Questionnaire: Page 37; Male Questionnaire: Page 21)
- S6_3337_a.sav (Female Questionnaire: Page 38; Male Questionnaire: Page 22)
- S7_1_3_g.sav (Female Questionnaire: Pages 39-41; Male Questionnaire: Pages 23-25)
- S78_4_12_e.sav (Female Questionnaire: Pages 42-46; Male Questionnaire: Pages 26-30)
Data Access
| Name |
|---|
| World Bank |
| Is signing of a confidentiality declaration required? | Confidentiality declaration text |
|---|---|
| yes | Confidentiality of respondents is guaranteed by Articles N to NN of the National Statistics Act of [date]. Before being granted access to the dataset, all users have to formally agree: 1. To make no copies of any files or portions of files to which s/he is granted access except those authorized by the data depositor. 2. Not to use any technique in an attempt to learn the identity of any person, establishment, or sampling unit not identified on public use data files. 3. To hold in strictest confidence the identification of any establishment or individual that may be inadvertently revealed in any documents or discussion, or analysis. Such inadvertent identification revealed in her/his analysis will be immediately brought to the attention of the data depositor. |
- Public use files, accessible to all
Use of the dataset must be acknowledged using a citation which would include:
- the Identification of the Primary Investigator
- the title of the survey (including country, acronym and year of implementation)
- the survey reference number
- the source and date of download
World Bank. Rapid Assessment Survey of the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) 2009. Ref. PAK_2009_BISP_v01_M. Downloaded from site www.microdata.worldbank.org on 29 March 2011.
Disclaimer and copyrights
The user of the data acknowledges that the original collector of the data, the authorized distributor of the data, and the relevant funding agency bear no responsibility for use of the data or for interpretations or inferences based upon such uses.
Contacts
| Name | Affiliation | |
|---|---|---|
| Microdata Library | World Bank | microdatalib@worldbank.org |
Metadata production
DDI_PAK_2009_BISP_v01_M_WB
| Name | Affiliation | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Development Economics Data Group | World Bank | Documentation of the DDI |
2013-08-29
Metadata version
Version 01 (August 2013)