DOI: 10.5285/6d94d084-6c9d-4f81-8a3f-0b82de827858
title: Household composition, income and assets survey data (including environmental product collection) from Mabalane, Gurue and Marrupa districts, Mozambique in 2014 and 2015

description: This dataset includes data collected as part of the Abrupt Changes in Ecosystem Services (ACES) project on the composition, income (including consumption and sale of environmental resources), ownership of assets (e.g. farming equipment, household furnishings and own transport) and wellbeing of respondent households in rural Mozambique. Data are also included from a participatory wealth ranking exercise carried out in each village. 
 
Data were collected in a total of 27 villages: 7 villages in Mabalane District in Gaza Province, 10 villages in Gurué District in Zambezia Province and 10 villages in Marrupa District in Niassa Province. Data collection was carried out in 2014 and 2015, using a one-off environmentally-augmented household income and assets survey administered by enumerators in the locally appropriate language.   
 
The objective of the ACES project was to explore interactions between woodland change, ecosystem services and wellbeing in rural Mozambican households. The study used a space-for-time substitution approach, with villages in each district chosen to represent different points on gradients of land use intensity with respect to the dominant land use types in each district (charcoal production in Mabalane, commercial agriculture in Gurué and subsistence agriculture in Marrupa). Data were collected primarily by researchers based in the School of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh and at the University of Eduardo Mondlane in Mozambique. 
 
All the data collected using the household survey are included in this dataset barring those data which would compromise the anonymity of respondents, such as the names and household coordinates of those interviewed. 
description: Data for the ACES project were collected in three districts of Mozambique representing three different social-ecological contexts. Marrupa District in Niassa Province has low levels of infrastructure and livelihoods are characterised by dependence on subsistence rather than commercial agriculture. In contrast, Gurué District in Zambezia Province is one of the main commercial crop producing regions of Mozambique, with crops including soya, pulses and sunflower primarily derived from smallholder producers. Mabalane District in Gaza Province is characterised by high dependence of livelihoods on production of charcoal, primarily for supply to the capital city Maputo. 

A total of 27 villages were chosen for inclusion in the survey based upon scoping visits: 7 in Malabane, 10 in Gurué and 10 in Marrupa. The ACES project followed a ‘space-for-time’ substitution approach, with villages selected at different intensities of the dominant land use in each of the three districts (specifically charcoal in Mabalane, soya in Gurué and tobacco in Marrupa). The chosen villages within each district displayed, as far as possible, similar soil and vegetation types, and had a leader who was resident in the village. 

The ACES survey used the definition of a household as people ‘eating from the same pot’ . Different household sampling strategies were used in the three study districts: in Malabane, a census of all households was attempted as villages were relatively small, whereas in Marrupa and Gurué stratified random sampling was employed with the aim of oversampling the rich and very poor households.