68 countries have comparable data for at least two points in time. Since such data are available for the largest countries, the share of population covered by at least two comparable surveys in fiscal 2000 is high - 86 percent. This is the same percentage as in 1999, but it is a vast improvement with respect to 1995. Nonetheless, this is an improvement compared to 1999, when the share of population covered by open access to data was only 46 percent. Availability of comparable surveys over time is above 80 percent in all regions apart from the Middle East and North Africa, where only 45 of the population is covered by comparable surveys, and Sub-Saharan Africa, where the share of population is 51 percent.
Data access is almost universal in South Asia, and fairly frequent in Europe and Central Asia.
Access is still low in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. In East Asia only 27 percent of the surveys are openly accessible and in the Middle East and North Africa only 38 percent. In fiscal 2000 there was further progress on poverty monitoring data in the Africa region. A key initiative was the launch of the Household Survey Databank , a web database with in-depth information on African surveys and links to documents and questionnaires. The Databank features a Survey Navigator and a Document Navigator, which allow users to perform searches of the data archives and of survey documentation and questionnaires, analytical and working papers, manuals, and yearbooks.