2% of households for Malawi and Tanzania and 4% for Uganda.<sup>30</sup> The final samples for Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda include, respectively, 12,015, 3,012, and 2,337 households.

# **2.5 Household Survey Data vs. National Accounts**

Table 1 compares our household survey data from ISAs with the national accounts data for 2010 from the World Development Indicators at the World Bank database. The national accounts figures are reported in panel (a), and the mean income and consumption per capita computed with the ISA household survey data adjusted as described in this Section are reported in panel (b). Focusing on Malawi, we find that the mean income per capita from our household survey data is US$343, which is very close to the national accounts number of US$359. However, note that the composition of income as estimated by the household survey implies that agricultural ouptut represents 43% of total income, while this figure is solely 29% in the national accounts. Further, also note that in Section 2.2 we showed that ISAs do an excellent job of measuring unsold agricultural production. Combining these two findings suggests that national accounts are underestimating agricultural income by 41% in Malawi.<sup>31</sup> After such an adjustment, the national accounts estimate would result in a higher income than the household survey estimate. This then also implies that, if the national accounts are doing a good job in measuring nonagricultural income, the household survey is potentially underestimating (or not observing) some component of nonagricultural income. For example, illegal income from the diversion of international aid (e.g., in the form of bribes) could potentially account for some of this discrepancy.<sup>32</sup> Finally, while in Tanzania the household survey estimates of mean income are lower than those from the national accounts, in Uganda the household survey estimates and national accounts are not significantly different. Further, in Tanzania and Uganda the household survey measures of agricultural income are similar to the national accounts counterparts.<sup>33</sup> The main disparity between the household survey and the national accounts estimates is found in consumption. The ISA estimates of consumption per capita are higher than the national accounts estimates for all three countries. But, in fact, the high quality of consumption data

> 30The 2010 surveys for Tanzania and Uganda are the second waves of panel surveys. Splitter households were dropped to compute the tables in this paper and are not accounted for in the percentage of trimming reported.

> 31That is, the ratio between the agricultural income from the household surey and the national accounts is, US$343 _×_ 0.43/US$359 _×_ 0.29=1.41.

> 32The reason is that international aid shows up in national accounts but not necessarily in household survey data. See, for example, the cashgate scandal covered by The Guardian, `http://www.theguardian. com/global-development/2014/nov/11/malawi-official-jailed-cashgate-scandal-aid` . This way, it is likely that the household survey will capture some, but not all, of the international aid, which according to WDI represents 26% of the total income in Malawi in 2010.

> 33The ratio between the agricultural income from the household survey and the national accounts is, US$378 _×_ 0.34/US$524 _×_ 0.28=0.87 for Tanzania and US$509 _×_ 0.28/US$471 _×_ 0.25=0.99 for Uganda.

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