HUNGARY 1991 - Documentation Table of Contents A. GENERAL INFORMATION B. POPULATION AND SAMPLE SIZE, SAMPLING METHODS C. MEASURES OF DATA QUALITY D. DATA COLLECTION AND ACQUISITION E. WEIGHTING PROCEDURES F. DETERMINATION OF SURVEY UNIT MEMBERSHIP G. CHILDREN AND SPOUSES H. AVAILABILITY OF BASIC SOCIAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION I. AVAILABILITY OF LABOUR MARKET INFORMATION J. AVAILABILITY OF GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION K. SOURCES AND AMOUNTS OF CASH INCOME L. TAXES M. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MAIN PUBLICATIONS A. GENERAL INFORMATION back Official name of the survey: Hungarian Household Panel Survey (HHPS) Administrative unit responsible for survey: Endre Sik / Istvan Toth TARKI H-1132 Budapest Victor Hugo U. 18-22 HUNGARY Phone: +36-1-1497-531 Fax: +36-1-1290-470 E-MAIL: H1074SIK@ELLA.HU / TOTH@TARKI.HU The survey is conducted annually. The first year was 1992. The first year in which the survey was available as micro data is 1993. The main focus of the survey is to measure income, unemployment, and poverty. The main source of funding for the survey is the National Hungarian Research Fund (OTKA), Central Statistical Office, Budapest Mayor's Office, National Labor Center and the National Labor Center. The process of data collection beganin April 1992 and was completed in June 1992 This sampling period is standard for all survey years.
The principle users of the data collected in this survey were the HHPS Research Team and CSO The release of the micro data from this survey to the public has not been restricted in any way. B POPULATION AND SAMPLE SIZE, SAMPLING METHODS back 1. The Sample Design and Sampling Frames The sample uses 2,000 national addresses gained from the 1990 Census and an additional 600 addresses were used from the city of Budapest Homeless and migrant heads are not included in the sample. The sample contains individuals with non-institutional addresses. Members of the military living in military housing and military living with their families are included. The original 1992 sample consisted of four stages of stratification. In the first stage, a set of 8 neighboring districts in the city of Budapest and 11 (of a possible 19) neighboring counties were selected. The second stage of stratification selected all settlements which contained populations above 50,000 inhabitants, and a random sample from smaller settlements. The third stage consisted of selecting electoral districts to match the socio-geographical distribution of the districts. Finally a random sample of the 1990 Census addresses were made from these districts. Calculations were made to ensure that all addresses in the 1990 Census were given equal chance of inclusion. The sample followed several conditions: the number of included settlements must be greater than 70, all settlements with more than 50,000 inhabitants must be included in the sample, and the number of interviews conducted in a smaller settlement is 14-26. This resulted in a sample of 75 settlements, including Budapest. All populations were given equal opportunity of participation in the sample. An additional sample was taken for the inhabitants of Budapest this subset is held separately and is not a part of the LIS data set. The sample was selected from 2,000 national addresses and 600 Budapest addresses were selects for sampling and an additional 2,000 national addresses and 600 Budapest addresses were selected for backup. These came from a possible 3,842,602 national addresses. Unoccupied housing units were excluded. If an address was unoccupied, an address from the same district was selected from the backup list to replace it. Total number of respondents who were actually surveyed: (and made available to the LIS database) Unweighted N= 4266 respondents, 2059 households for 1992 4288 respondents for 1993 Weighted N= Sample was not weighted for 1992. Total number of sample units in the sampling frame not interviewed: Unweighted N= 843 Weighted N= Sample was not weighted for 1992. The sampling frame did not include all geographic areas in the country. Some counties were omitted. This exclusion
only increases the sampling error, it does not bias the information. C. MEASURES OF DATA QUALITY back 1. Item and Group Non response Rates Due to the sampling procedure stated above there was a zero non-response rate. The non response rate for the city of Budapest was higher than that of rural Hungary. 2. Reporting and Under-Reporting An evaluation of the quality of the income data has been done with microstatistical income estimates (from SNA). The three most important problems regarding the quality of the income data collected in this survey are: 1. Small scale agriculture data and informal income economy data are severely under reported. 2. Self employment income is under reported. 3. If there exists high correlation between response and income then, by omitting those individuals who did not answer the first wave, there may exist a bias toward high income. D. DATA COLLECTION AND ACQUISITION back Interview was made by a personal visit. Lottery tickets, pens, and calendars were issued to respondents to increase the response rate. Contact addresses and phone numbers were issued to maintain contact for future surveys. Note that the sampling unit is the address, whereas the unit of analysis is the household. If there were more than three households at a single address the address was treated as an institution and thus omitted. In every household a "householder" was chosen as the individual who knows the most about the household. This householder was given both the Individual Questionnaire, the Household Questionnaire, and the Household Composition Sheet. All other household members above 15 years of age answered the Individual Questionnaires. The householder was also asked to fill in a Proxy Questionnaire about household members not present at the time of the survey. There are four type of questionnaires: the Individual, the Household, and the Proxy Questionnaire; and the Household Composition Sheet. Both the Household and Individual Questionnaires contain wave specific blocks of questions as well as standard blocks of questions repeated throughout all waves of the panel. Standard blocks in the Household Questionnaire are: household composition, housing, subjective poverty indicators, expenditures, ownership of goods, savings, small scale agriculture production, and inter household transfers. For the Individual Questionnaire standard blocks are economic activity, unemployment, employment, income, time budget, subjective attitudes. The Proxy Questionnaire contains basic individual characteristic and income questions. The Household Composition sheet breaks down the basic socio-demographic information of each member of the household. Participation in the survey was voluntary. Privacy was assured explicitly. Each respondent over the age 15 was given an Individual Questionnaire. "Householders" were given Proxy Questionnaires describing those individuals who were unavailable for sampling. The interviewer answered three additional questions detailing their perception of third person influence on the respondent.
Respondents were not asked to consult or use pay records, tax returns, etc. to help provide the most accurate income information possible. E. WEIGHTING PROCEDURES back No survey weight has been assigned to each sample case. Estimates derived from the sample are representative of the total population defined by the sampling frame. F. DETERMINATION OF SURVEY UNIT MEMBERSHIP back A household is defined to be all persons living under the same roof, sharing income and expenditures. In a single address there may exist up to three households. Any address with more than three households is defined to be an institution. Those individuals who do not live at a given address yet share income and/or expenses are also considered part of the household. If these individuals are not available to the interviewer, a Proxy Questionnaire is completed by the householder. Included in the 1992 survey is a retrospective household composition form for March 1991- April 1992. This allows inclusion of household members who were present during the sampling period but no longer a member of the household at the time of the interview. The basic unit of aggregation used in this survey is the household. The overall sampling unit can be divided into subgroups in those situations where several families share the same housing unit: up to three households can share the same sampled address. The "head" of the household is defined to be the oldest active male. If there does not exist an active male it is the oldest active female. If there are no active members of the household, then the "head" is the eldest male. Note that this may not be the "householder". It is possible to identify all individuals, including those below age 15, have their own personal identification codes. Each individual is described by their relation to the head of the household in the Household Composition Table. G. CHILDREN AND SPOUSES back Children are defined to be any individual under the age of 15. It is not possible to distinguish between children of the unit head (or spouse) and children of some other household member or someone living outside the household. Spouses must be married. Same sex marriages are not legal. The categories which define relation to the head of the household are: self, married spouse, cohabitant, child, parent, mother-in-law, father-in-law, other relative, non relative. H. AVAILABILITY OF BASIC SOCIAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION back Indicators exist for city, county, residence in the city of Budapest.
I. AVAILABILITY OF LABOUR MARKET INFORMATION back J. AVAILABILITY OF GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION back Geographic location can be broken by regions (10 divisions), districts (85 divisions), size of locality (9 categories), and number of apartments in the census tract (3 divisions). K. SOURCES AND AMOUNTS OF CASH INCOME back L. TAXES back M. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MAIN PUBLICATIONS back