**marginalized Roma households in six countries in the Western Balkans.**<sup>**12**</sup> The 2017 RRS is a multitopic household survey representative of communities in which the share of the Roma population is larger than the Roma share in the national population. The survey encompasses both the Roma population and neighboring non-Roma. The RRS also has a time usage module, in which a randomly selected individual reported time spent in several activities during the previous day; the section was administered to only one randomly selected respondent. The survey, implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) with the support of the World Bank, was commissioned by the European Commission (EC) Directorate-General for Neighborhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR) to explore changes in core development outcomes among Roma and non-Roma who lived nearby. A full inclusion of gender dimensions across all the modules of the survey, including decision making, gender gaps in outcomes (labor, health, education, and other), time use, and gender norms, were included in the survey with the objective of capturing gender dynamics and gender gaps among the Roma population. The World Bank also conducted parallel qualitative research in Serbia to help to understand the mechanisms behind gaps in education and labor markets, with special attention to gender.

**In the 2017 RRS, Roma refers to those who self-identified as Roma,**<sup>**13**</sup> **Ashkali, or Egyptians, and the sample targeted marginalized Roma and their non-Roma neighbors** . The Roma are not a homogeneous population, but rather encompass diverse groups. The Roma sample was constructed based on the implicit endorsement of external identification (or implicit self-identification).<sup>14</sup> The sample focused on settlements where the Roma population’s share equals or is higher than the national share of Roma population, also known as “marginalized Roma.”<sup>15</sup> “Non-Roma” refers to the non-Roma population living in close vicinity to the marginalized Roma and is not meant to be representative of the total population of the country.<sup>16</sup> The Roma estimates presented from now on in this paper do not include non-Roma.

**The analysis in this paper relies on labor market and time usage data from the 2017 RRS.** The data were collected in 4 modules: management section, household members profile, the status of the household, and attitudes of the randomly selected respondent. For the labor market and labor income variables, modules 2 and 3 were used.<sup>17</sup> We estimate wives’ and husband’s labor market status and

> 12 The 2017 RRS was conducted in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro. 13 Those who self-identified as “Gypsies” in the survey are categorized as Roma by interviewers.

14 In a first phase, enumerators approached the externally identified Roma household and in a second stage the implicit self-identification is used. Questions on self-identification, interviewer identification, and language were included in both survey rounds so that the surveys allow for different definitions of ethnicity and a more nuanced discussion of the different groups.

15 In 2011, the sample was restricted to areas within settlements in which Roma represented 40 percent or more of the population. In 2017, areas in which Roma represented between 10 and 40 percent of the population were also included. These areas represent between 36 and 55 percent of the unweighted country samples.

16 The non-Roma neighboring population refers to population living within 300 meters of the Roma settlements. 17 Definitions for employment and unemployment are consistent with the International Labour Organization (ILO) definitions. The employed comprise all persons of working age (15–64) who: (a) worked during the reference period (last week) in paid work (in cash or in kind) for at least one hour; paid job may include wage or salary employment as well as profits or self-employment income; and/or (b) have a paid job or business but were temporarily absent during the reference period. The unemployed comprise all persons of working age (15–64) who: (a) were without work during the reference period, i.e. were not in paid employment or self-employment; 10