@TechReport{iza:izadps:dp16792,
            	author={Dang, Hai-Anh H and Kilic, Talip and Hlasny, Vladimir and Abanokova, Kseniya and Carletto, Calogero},
            	title={Using Survey-to-Survey Imputation to Fill Poverty Data Gaps at a Low Cost: Evidence from a Randomized Survey Experiment},
            	year={2024},
	month={Feb},
            	institution={Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)},
            	address={Bonn},
            	type={IZA Discussion Paper},
            	number={16792},
            	url={https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp16792},
	abstract={Survey data on household consumption are often unavailable or incomparable over time in many low- and middle-income countries. Based on a unique randomized survey experiment implemented in Tanzania, this study offers new and rigorous evidence demonstrating that survey-to-survey imputation can fill consumption data gaps and provide low-cost and reliable poverty estimates. Basic imputation models featuring utility expenditures, together with a modest set of predictors on demographics, employment, household assets and housing, yield accurate predictions. Imputation accuracy is robust to varying survey questionnaire length; the choice of base surveys for estimating the imputation model; different poverty lines; and alternative (quarterly or monthly) CPI deflators. The proposed approach to imputation also performs better than multiple imputation and a range of machine learning techniques. In the case of a target survey with modified (e.g., shortened or aggregated) food or non-food consumption modules, imputation models including food or non-food consumption as predictors do well only if the distributions of the predictors are standardized vis-à-vis the base survey. For best-performing models to reach acceptable levels of accuracy, the minimum-required sample size should be 1,000 for both base and target surveys. The discussion expands on the implications of the findings for the design of future surveys.},
	keywords={consumption;poverty;survey-to-survey imputation;household surveys;Tanzania},
            }