# Box 1: How consistent are the labor module, the AG module and the household enterprise module in LSMS‐ISA surveys?

This paper focuses on the labor module. But LSMS‐ISA surveys also collect employment data in the agricultural (AG) and household enterprise module.

- Relying on end‐of‐season recall, the AG module captures labor input per person and plot and, in some cases, by activity (land preparation, planting, harvesting) (see Gaddis and Palacios‐Lopez (2018) and Arthi et al. (2016) for a discussion of this approach and an assessment of recall error);

- The household enterprise module lists all household enterprises and records all household members involved as manager, owner or worker in the enterprise during the last month of operation in the past 12 months.

Using this information, we can verify the internal consistency of the labor, AG and household enterprise modules. Household members who worked on a plot – as captured in the AG module – should also have reported working in ‘HH farming in the last 12 months’ in the labor module. Similarly, household members listed in the enterprise module should also have reported being engaged in ‘running or helping in a non‐farm household enterprise’ in the labor module. We illustrate this approach for the 2016/17 Malawi LSMS‐ISA survey.

Table E in the Appendix compares responses in the labor and AG modules. Of 25,919 household members who worked on a plot in the rainy season, 2,034 (7.85%) were missing in the labor module. To explain this finding, we examined whether the share of ‘missing individuals’ differs by (1) the number of plots cultivated, (2) the type of activities carried out, (3) number of hours worked on all plots, (4) sex and (5) age of the individual. A clear pattern emerges. The share of individuals ‘missing’ in the labor module clearly decreases with increasing work intensity. It decreases with the number of plots cultivated, the number of different activities and the number of hours worked. We do not observe differences between men and women. There are, however, some differences by age group. One out of five children (5‐14 years old) who worked on a plot is not identified as such in the labor module, compared to 6.92% of the young people (15‐24 years old) and 3.62% of the workers aged 25 to 65.

Table F in the Appendix compares the responses in the labor and household enterprise modules. Of the 5,010 household members listed as owner, manager or worker in the enterprise module, 1,219 (24.3%) do not appear in the labor module. The share of ‘missing’ household members in the labor module is again correlated with work intensity. Household members who are the owner and manager as well as a worker in the enterprise are less likely to be missed in the labor module (17.3%) than household members who do not combine these three different roles. The share of missing observations also decreases with the number of hours worked in the enterprise (from 34% missing observations if less than 200 hours worked per year to 11% missing observations if more than 1,584 hours worked). Again, we do not observe differences between men and women. Young people reporting to be involved in the household enterprise are more often missing in the labor module than household members aged 25 to 65.

# 4.2. Paid and unpaid economic activities

A key difference between labor modules is related to the approach used to measure unpaid and paid work. We have identified four approaches. Two approaches, the single keyword question and the activity list, identify whether the person is employed in general or in specific activities. The two other approaches, the stylized questions followed by questions about the main and second wage job and time diaries, measure hours worked in the last 7‐days/12‐ months or at specific moments during the day. Recently, some surveys, like the survey 11