User’s guide to the Kagera health and development survey datasets. Development Research Group.
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Date
2004
Authors
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Publisher
The World Bank
Abstract
It has long been established that poverty worsens health. It has been more difficult to establish
that poor health worsens poverty or that health improvements can stimulate economic growth.
The AIDS epidemic has dramatically raised the mortality rate among adults in their most
productive years in Sub-Saharan Africa. What will be the impact on poverty and human capital,
in a region where incomes, schooling, and health status are already low? To answer this question
and to contribute to improved design of cost-effective programs to deal with the impact on
households, the Population and Human Resources Department and the Africa Technical
Department of the World Bank jointly launched a research project on “The Economic Impact of
Fatal Adult Illness from AIDS and Other Causes in Sub-Saharan Africa” in 1991.1
To measure the impact of adult mortality and morbidity on the welfare of individuals and
households, the research project launched a longitudinal household survey, known as the Kagera
Health and Development Survey (KHDS), in the Kagera region of Tanzania from 1991-94. This
region of 1.9 million people, located on the western shore of Lake Victoria adjacent to Uganda
and Rwanda and not far from Zaire, is at a political and economic crossroads that is also at the
epicenter of the AIDS epidemic in East Africa. The first case of AIDS in Tanzania was
identified in Kagera in 1983, and subsequent serological studies have found infection rates
among adults as high as 24% in the regional capital of Bukoba in the late 1980s (Killewo and
others 1990).
The KHDS interviewed more than 800 households from nearly 50 communities in all five
districts of Kagera. Households, community leaders, health facilities, schools, and market
vendors were queried in 6-7 month intervals for up to four survey periods. Traditional healers
were also interviewed once. Although the KHDS questionnaires were adapted from the World
Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) questionnaires, the KHDS was unique
because it was fully longitudinal.2 The panel design offered the researchers the opportunity to
measure the change in household consumption and assets between interviews, and thus, to estimate
household saving or dissaving—key household-level coping mechanisms.
This document describes the KHDS research design, sampling and survey organization, the
questionnaires, and the basic structure of the data for researchers who wish to use the KHDS
datasets. Copies of all questionnaires and the interviewer and supervisor manuals can be
obtained from the Living Standards Measurement Study web site
Description
Keywords
AIDS, Health survey, Kagera
Citation
Ainsworth, M., Koda, G., Lwihula, G., Mujinja, P. and Semali, I., 2004. User’s guide to the Kagera health and development survey datasets. Development Research Group. The World Bank.