ways in which people interact with the state, as well as their perceptions and levels of trust. These are themes which LITS2 is uniquely positioned to address: the survey includes an expanded module on governance and service delivery which enables new analysis on the links between the ways in which people use, experience and interact with public services, their perceptions and trust in providers and institutions, and the quality of service delivery itself.

There are obviously a number of caveats in the interpretation of satisfaction data. The presence of externalities (e.g. additional social benefits of education, public health, etc.), may mean that users‘ satisfaction does not capture the full extent of desired social outcomes. Second, even if individuals and society share the same goal – such as more rapid student learning – some persons may have been conditioned to have low expectations, leading them to report high satisfaction despite poor service delivery outcomes. A third reason for caution is information asymmetries: this is particularly evident in health services, where providers have technical information and expertise that patients lack and cannot therefore evaluate properly (Fiszbein, Rogers and Ringold, 2011; Das and Hammer, 2007). Still, subjective data on peoples‘ experiences and perceptions of service delivery quality can help complement more objective measures of service delivery (e.g. from facilities surveys) to help policy makers and development practitioners track progress of country programs and strategies.

Using data from the 2010 Life in Transition Survey Round 2 (LITS2), this paper examines the levels of citizens‘ satisfaction with public service delivery in Europe and Central Asia and identifies some factors that may help explain how levels of satisfaction with service delivery vary across different population sub-groups and change over time. Section 2 describes the coverage of governance and service delivery in LITS2 and presents the key findings on the prevalence of unofficial payments, and utilization of and satisfaction with public services. Section 3 analyzes differences across individuals and across countries (over time) in utilization and satisfaction with public services. We conclude by discussing a few measures that governments can implement to further increase citizens‘ satisfaction with public service delivery.

# **2. UTILIZATION AND SATISFACTION WITH PUBLIC SERVICE DELIVERY**

# **2.1. The data:  Government performance and service delivery in the 2010 LITS**

The Life in Transition Survey was conducted jointly by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank in 2006 and 2010. Between 1,000 and 1,500 households were interviewed in every country. In total, in 2010, almost 39,000 households were surveyed in 34 countries of Europe and Central Asia to assess public attitudes, well-being and the impacts of economic and political change.

The governance and service delivery module focuses on eight different public services or interactions: traffic police, official documents (such as passport or birth certificate), civil courts, primary or secondary education, vocational education, the public health system, unemployment benefits and other social security benefits. For each service, respondents were asked their 3