Life in Kyrgyzstan Study, 2010 - 2019

The ‘Life in Kyrgyzstan’ Study is a research-based multi-topic longitudinal survey of households and individuals in Kyrgyzstan. It tracks the same 3000 households and over 8000 individuals over time in all seven Kyrgyz regions (oblasts) and the two cities of Bishkek and Osh. The survey collects information at household and individual levels on topics such household demographics, assets, expenditure, migration, employment, agricultural markets, shocks, social networks, subjective well-being, and many other topics. The survey was first conducted in the fall of 2010 and it has been repeated four times in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2016. All members of the households in 2010 are tracked for each wave and new household members are added to the survey and tracked as well.

The survey consists of a household questionnaire (to be filled in by the most informed household member), an individual questionnaire (to be filled in by all adults of age 18 and above of the sampled households) and a community questionnaire (to be filled in by a representative of a local administration).

The ‘Life in Kyrgyzstan’ Study was established by Prof. Tilman Brück as a project funded by the German Volkswagen Foundation from 2010 till 2012. The project was a collaborative endeavor of DIW Berlin, Humboldt-University of Berlin, the Center for Social and Economic Research (CASE-Kyrgyzstan), and the American University of Central Asia, the latter two being based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
In the period 2013-2015 the ‘Life in Kyrgyzstan’ Study is being funded by DFID and IZA as part of the Growth and Labour Market-Low Income Country (GLM-LIC) Programme. The Principal Investigator of the project is Professor Tilman Brück, Director of ISDC – International Security and Development Center based in Berlin and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at SIPRI. The consortium currently includes SIPRI as the lead institution, the University of Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan), Hannover University (Germany), Manchester University (UK), Vanderbilt University (USA), and several research institutions from Asia and Europe.

Research Focus:
The dataset covers a wide range of topics – from household demographics, assets, income sources, expenditure, migration to individual well-being, employment, social networks, decision-making, and attitudes among many other topics.
Each of the questionnaires consists of several modules. Most of the modules, in turn, include several sections. Some changes were made to the questionnaires after the first wave. A few sections were dropped because they turned out to deliver too few useful observations or were no longer relevant in the later waves of the project. A number of sections that promised to provide information on interesting and relevant topics were incorporated into the survey during the latter waves.

The household-level questionnaire asks about:
1) Household composition and children
2) Housing and assets
3) Agricultural markets
4) Consumption and expenditure
5) Income sources
6) Migration
7) Shocks

The individual-level questionnaire covers these areas:
1) Subjective well-being
2) Education, health and personality
3) Labour market
4) Movements
5) Family and household
6) Worries
7) Security and violence
8) Social life

The community-level questionnaire covers:
1) General community information
2) Prices for food products

Spatial Coverage:
The LiK survey collects data in all seven Kyrgyz oblasts (Batken, Chui, Djalal-Abad, Issyk-Kul, Naryn, Osh, and Talas) and the cities of Bishkek and Osh. It is representative at the national level as well as for urban and rural areas and for the south and the north of the country.

Tracking:
The LiK is an individual panel, not a household panel. All adult members of the households, not just one respondent, are interviewed and tracked over time. This implies that if a member of an original sample household leaves the household (e.g. to form an own family), she is still part of the sample. If relevant, other members (e.g. spouse and children) of the new household are then included in the sample as well.

In principle, all persons who took part in the first wave of the survey in 2010 are to be surveyed in the following waves. Hence, the survey tracks individuals, not households. In each survey year, all individuals aged 18 and older, who were part of a LiK household in the previous years, and their respective households, are to be interviewed. If the sample individual moves, the individual is followed within Kyrgyzstan; if he or she moves out of the country, the individual is dropped from the sample. He or she may re-enter when coming back to the original household later. New individuals that move into an existing LiK household are surveyed and tracked, even in case of their eventual departure from the household in the following waves. Since all adult household members are to be re-interviewed individually in the LiK, all children of LiK households become part of the sample once they turn 18.

With regard to the sample sizes, 8,160 individuals were interviewed in the first wave and 8,066 individuals in the second wave. Of the individuals included in the first wave, 7,364 (or 90.2 percent) were re-interviewed during the second wave. With regard to households, 3,000 households were interviewed in the first wave and 2,863 in the second wave. Of the households included in the first wave, 2,856 (or 95.2 percent) were re-interviewed during the second wave.

The third wave interviewed 8177 individuals representing 2816 households during October-December 2012. 98,1 % of these households (2765) responsible for 93,3 % of respondents (7630 people) came from the second wave.

In 2013 wave, 7681 individuals were interviewed between November 2013 and January 2014. 6,558 of these respondents were participants of LiK 2012. Out of 2584 households that took part in the fourth wave, 2,522 households (97,6 percent) were tracked from the third wave of the project. Out of the original sample of 3000 households identified in 2010, 2450 households (81.6 percent) participated in all four waves of the project.

Quality control:
All questionnaires were first developed in English and later translated into Kyrgyz and Russian. The survey has been implemented by the data collection company Sotseconik, which is based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The interviews have been conducted by around 120 recruited interviewers, who were supervised by 40 field supervisors. The field supervisors along with eight regional supervisors were responsible for logistical and administrative issues, as well as for counseling and data quality checks. They were also in charge of collecting information in the community questionnaire.

The original sample that was drawn for the first wave of data collection consists of 3,000 households and slightly more than 8,000 individuals in these households. The households were drawn through stratified two-stage random sampling. The strata are formed by Bishkek, Osh city, and the rural and urban areas of the seven oblasts, amounting to 16 strata in total.

At the first stage, a set of so-called population points (i.e. communities in rural areas, quarters in urban areas) were drawn in each stratum according to probabilities proportionate to population size. In each population point, a set of 25 households was drawn at the second stage. The National Statistical Committee (NSC) of the Kyrgyz Republic provided a household survey sample of 3,000 households based on the 2009 Population Census data. NSC also prepared reserve samples, ranging from 20 percent of the sample in rural areas to 100 percent in violence-affected areas in the southern part of the country. As only 73 percent of the households on the original sample list were found and interviewed, 27 percent of households had to be drawn from the reserve samples. Refusal to participate was relatively high – nearly two thirds of the households from the original sample list that had to be replaced had declined to participate in the survey.

Brück, T., D. Esenaliev, A. Kroeger, A. Kudebayeva, B. Mirkasimov and S. Steiner (2014): “Household Survey Data for Research on Well-Being and Behavior in Central Asia”. Journal of Comparative Economics, vol. 42, no. 3, pp. 819-35.

Key reference

Life in Kyrgyzstan Study, 2013. Research Data Center of IZA (IDSC). Version 1.0, doi:10.15185/izadp.7055.1

Researchers working with the “Life in Kyrgyzstan Study” are obligated to acknowledge the data base and its documentation within their publications, including the DOI, by using this reference.