international comparison given that there is considerable heterogeneity in revealed preferences among job quality components such as pay, stability, or flexibility in the population and across countries (Assy et al. 2019; Kumar et al. 2019; Wiswall and Zafar 2018). Nonetheless, analysis on a single country and future research might consider this alternative.

# **c. Country coverage and ex post harmonization of data on job quality**

The ideal measurement approach to job quality provides detailed information on all working individuals in each of the four dimensions for all jobs, including potential secondary and tertiary employment. Compared with multidimensional poverty measures, data on job quality attributes are not systematically collected in all surveys. The quality and availability of microdata on dimensions of job quality vary across countries, within countries across different employment types, such as wage workers or the selfemployed, and across primary, secondary, or tertiary jobs on the individual observation level. The three main data constraints on the proposed analysis are therefore an insufficient overlap in relevant survey questions, an insufficient overlap in categorial definitions of employment status, and high unit nonresponse on crucial survey questions to build this metric.

The production of the proposed JQM based on the Alkire-Foster framework thus requires a substantive effort at ex post harmonization of data across developing countries. To compile the harmonized dataset of job characteristics and demographic attributes, the analysis identified 40 countries with household or labor force surveys that contain questions that are both comparable across countries and pertinent to job quality. The resulting sample spans all regions and income groups across the globe. The 40 countries include 12 in the Sub-Saharan African region, 6 in the East Asia and Pacific region, 12 in the Latin America and Caribbean region, two in the Europe and Central Asia region, 6 in the South Asia region, and two in the Middle East and North Africa region.<sup>18</sup> Survey selection for each country depends on which survey contains more relevant employment information. For many countries, the choice of a survey is a tradeoff between the availability of detailed household income and expenditure data in household surveys and extensive employment modules in labor force surveys. Annex table A1 shows the list of available surveys by country-year included in this study. (Table A1 also shows the latest available GDP per capita, poverty headcount ratio, and JQM for wage employees.) The list of developing countries included in this study ranges from low-income and International Development Association–eligible countries to high-income countries across all regions.

The ex post harmonization of data to estimate the quality of jobs across developing countries is one of the main contributions of this paper, but not all survey questions are available across countries. This variation in data coverage and availability presents a challenge in measuring job quality globally. To overcome this constraint and increase coverage, it is common to include more indicators that are substitutes for each other. However, carelessly including more indicators to overcome the lack of survey question availability may reduce comparability across countries and render the JQM meaningless. Furthermore, employment-related surveys are subject to a country’s regulatory framework. For example, if health insurance and pensions are state sponsored, an employment survey may not contain questions regarding social protection coverage at work. To construct a JQM that is both broad in scope and true to the intended use, the process of selecting survey questions to serve as indicators needs to be carefully considered. Indicators must be pertinent to each dimension, but also available and comparable across the

> 18 The labor force and household surveys are not publicly available.

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