# 3. Data Sources

**Household-level data:** The analysis utilizes household-level data from the Philippines Family Income and Expenditure Surveys (FIES) for the years 2003, 2006, 2009, 2012, and 2015, collected by the Philippines Statistical Authority. The FIES is used for the official estimation of poverty in the Philippines and it provides detailed information on the components of household food and non-food expenditures (inside and outside the home), household income by source, as a well as a wide variety of household socio-economic characteristics.

FIES data are collected twice for each household, just after the middle of the year (July) and just following the end of the year (the following January), with responses for each survey reflecting economic behaviors over the preceding six months. Responses for each household are then averaged between the two surveys to construct annual estimates. It is important to note that if a household cannot be found in either round of the survey, it is dropped from the sample, which raises some concerns about the use of the annual FIES data made publicly available in any analysis of the welfare impacts of typhoons in general. Typhoon activity in the Philippines is concentrated in the second half of the calendar year, so estimates of typhoon impacts using consumption data averaged over two points, one in June and the other in January of next year, may be somewhat attenuated because the consumption in June is collected prior to the bulk of typhoon events and thus likely to be higher than the consumption expenditures collected in January next year.

We are fortunate to have access to the semester data behind each publicly available annual FIES survey. This offers a number of advantages: (i) it allows closer and better matching of the timing of a typhoon and the date of measurement of consumption and thus an investigation of the short-term impacts of typhoons occurring during the six month interval prior to the collection of household expenditure; and (ii) the possibility of investigating the medium-term impacts of typhons, i.e. the impacts of typhoons occurring in the first six months of the calendar year on the consumption of households in the second semester (bearing in mind that this may be biased due to attrition of households between survey rounds).

Earlier studies on the impacts of typhoons on different dimensions of welfare (Anttila-Hughes and Hsiang, 2013) have been hampered by the fact that they only had access to the annual averaged FIES consumption data, which, for the reasons mentioned above, are likely to be attenuated.<sup>12</sup> The use of household-level PCE data varying across two semesters of a calendar year as well as across calendar years 2003, 2006, 2009, 2012, and 2015, and across different regions, requires taking into account of the temporal (within year and across years) and spatial variation in the cost of living in the Philippines.<sup>13</sup> For this reason, nominal consumption in each

> 12 This is why Anttila-Hughes and Hsiang (2013) downplay the impacts on consumption and focus on capital losses the year <u>following typhoon exposure, as it seems unlikely that capital can be replaced immediately following a storm.</u>

> 13 The Philippines consists of 17 regions, 81 provinces and about 40,000 barangays.

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