Living Standards Analytics: Development through the Lens of Household Survey Data [Paperback]

The purpose of this book is to introduce, discuss, illustrate, and evaluate the colorful palette of analytical techniques that can be applied to the analysis of household survey data, with an emphasis on the innovations of the past decade or so.

Most of the chapters begin by introducing a methodological or policy problem, to motivate the subsequent discussion of relevant methods.? They then summarize the relevant techniques, and draw on examples  many of them from the authors own work  and aim to convey a sense of the potential, but also the strengths and weaknesses, of those techniques.?

This book is meant for graduate students in statistics, economics, policy analysis, and social sciences, especially, but certainly not exclusively, those interested in the challenges of economic development in the Third World.? Additionally, the book will be useful to academics and practitioners who work closely with survey data. This is a book that can serve as a reference work, to be taken down from the shelf and perused from time to time.

Introduction.- Graphical exploratory methods.- Sample size issues.- Beyond linear regression.- Adjustment for spatial correlation.- The issue of causality.- Non-homogeneity/mixtures.- Bayesian analysis.- Grouping methods.- Panel data issues.- Measures of poverty and inequality.- Bootstrap.- Fuzzy methods for poverty measures.- Combining data sets.

Overall, the book is highly accessible and nicely produced. The authors characterise it as a gateway book, and I think that, for researchers in policy analysis and household survey work who learnt their trade some time ago, this is an apt description: The book provides an excellent introduction to some of the more recent developments. I shall certainly recommend it to colleagues in the public policy domain...It includes traditional staples such as linear regression and sampling, but also more recent and advanced tools such as the use lv