In February 2007, PERI hosted a team of three economists from Kenya's Central Bureau of Statistics, Dankit Nassiuma, Vivian Nyarunda, and Robert Nderitu. The collaboration began when the three attended a seminar last October in Nairobi given by PERI's Robert Pollin, James Heintz, and Mwangi Githinji of the University of Massachusetts economics department. The PERI team was presenting the preliminary version of their study, An Employment-Targeted Economic Program for Kenya, sponsored by the United Nations Development Program.
The specific purpose of the Kenyan’s visit was to work with PERI economists on a series of methodological and substantive questions on Kenya’s new labor force and household survey. For two weeks, Robert Pollin, James Heintz, Jeannette Wicks-Lim and Mwangi Githinji worked intensely with their Kenyan colleagues to distill preliminary findings on employment and poverty. PERI researchers in turn will have access to the survey data as they prepare a final draft of An Employment-Targeted Economic Program for Kenya. The results will be a test of the Kenyan government's recent job creation strategies, provide a baseline of data on the well-being of Kenyans, and hopefully lead to further collaboration between the Kenyan government and PERI.
Dankit Nassiuma, Robert Nderitu, and Vivian Nyarunda took a few minutes to talk with PERI's Communications Director Debbie Zeidenberg about their work and their visit to PERI.
This is Kenya’s fourth labor force survey—the third, much less extensive, was completed in 1999. What changes do you expect the updated survey to show, compared to the data from five years earlier?
The Kenya Integrated Household Budget Survey (KIHBS) of 2005-06 was designed to collect a wide spectrum of socio-economic indicators required to measure, monitor and analyze the progress made in improving living standards of the Kenyans. Thus, the KIHBS aims at providing a key database to update various indicators and provide a baseline for measuring and monitoring progress through future surveys in the National Statistical System.
The KIHBS of 2005-06 is certainly richer in terms of data than the Urban Household Budget Survey of 1993-94 and the Labour Force Survey of 1998-99. This time around the rural component of consumption and expenditure is covered. The employment data was collected over a whole year. This is expected to give whatever seasonal variations there may be in the employment situation in Kenya. In addition to providing new labour market indicators, the KIHBS was designed to enable updating and strengthening of three other vital aspects of the national statistical database: the Consumer Price Index, poverty and inequality; and the System of National Accounts.
What do you expect to do with this new data when you return? How will you use research like this to inform policy in Kenya?
The labour results from the survey will be compiled into a report and disseminated in the due course and will form the basis for national labor policy decisions. The 2005-6 dataset will eventually be made available to other research institutions, the donor community and any other interested parties for further deeper analysis.
The Government of Kenya is committed to improving the welfare of all Kenyans through sound macroeconomic management and by providing access to quality public goods and services. First, formulating, implementing and monitoring evidence-based economic policies and programs aimed at promoting economic growth requires improved statistics and information. Second, recent increases in the demand for statistics are driven by the need to monitor the Government’s “Economic Recovery Strategy for Wealth and Employment Creation” and Millennium Development Goals. Therefore, research like this one informs such processes among others since if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it.
What are the benefits of traveling all this way to work with PERI, compared to consulting with other economists in Kenya or Africa?
We appreciate very much, the partnership between, the Government of Kenya and PERI. This provides for an environment where researchers can exchange ideas on some complex issues such as generating grossing up factors and weighting procedures for the labour indicators. Labour is taken as a stock concept where it’s recommended that the reference period be as short as possible. KIHBS was a year long survey, which raised a number of complicating analysis challenges--hence the need to consult. The PERI team has researchers who are very knowledgeable in labour market information and we hope to gain a lot from them. We are indebted to Professors Robert Pollin, James Heintz, Jeanette Wicks-Lim and Mwangi Githinji for their assistance in this work. We can’t forget the support of Michele Mattingly and Judy Fogg as well.
Do you have the analytic capacity to do this work at home, or are there barriers to sufficient training?
The Government has a very intensive program of training professionals. However, there are no training opportunities locally for training personnel in some highly specialized areas such as labour economics at the PhD level. We hope the University of Massachusetts can assist in this area. We are looking forward to collaborating even more in future.
What data analysis techniques are you using on this visit that are particularly useful in your work?
The issue of adjusting weights so that we are able to measure seasonality in employment levels is one among other techniques. The skills acquired are very valuable and will go along way in improving the quality of our analytical techniques. The discussions with the PERI team have been very fruitful. We’ve tried a number of different approaches, and though the weighting procedures are slightly different, the outcomes are basically the same.
Vivian, only about 35% of public sector jobs are held by women, and I would guess that the numbers get smaller as the educational requirements of a given job increase. How common is it to find women at your professional and educational level?
It is true that the number of women in certain professions and at higher levels is lower compared to the men. However, the number of women professionals is on the rise in almost all fields. The government currently has a policy where 30% of all available government vacancies are reserved for women. More so, women are normally given priority during recruitments as long as they qualify.
And the most important question of all: how do you like the snow here in Amherst?
Wonderful, just wonderful, it’s like we are in another planet. The snowing is beautiful but the weather is hostile especially when it is cold and windy. It takes more than two weeks to get used to the weather.
Political Economy Research Institute
