assistance budget could also be utilized for selected NSO staff to attend training workshops and other international conferences/workshops relevant for the country-specific household survey work program.

It is clear that the budgeted and accrued technical assistance expenditures may vary across countries depending on 1) budget constraints, 2) overall survey design and complexity; 3) NSO capacity for questionnaire and sampling design, prevailing approach to fieldwork management and data quality control, capacity for data curation and analysis, and track record for data dissemination; and 4) donor aspirations for long-term capacity building. The variation may depend also on the fieldwork duration, which is assumed to be 12 months in Table 3, as well as whether the resident advisor will be specific to a given country or could be assigned regionally in circumstances when economies of scale could be achieved by implementing a regional household survey initiative. The latter, for instance, is likely a more sensible approach to technical assistance provision in the context of small island countries.

# **d. Projected growth in survey implementation and technical assistance costs**

Will the costs of survey implementation and technical assistance increase in _real_ terms over the course of the 15-year period (2016-2030)?<sup>18</sup> This is an empirical question for which there is little data that can offer an answer.<sup>19</sup> On the one hand, improvements in data capture, processing, and dissemination can increase the cost-effectiveness of data production. Also, technological improvements and improving training for enumerators might soften scarcity of qualified enumerators, especially in Africa where the survey implementation cost per household is significantly higher than in other regions. If technological improvements and improving training enable average labor to conduct data collection, the survey implementation cost in Africa should decline. On the other hand, survey costs could increase in real terms due to (i) increased complexity of questionnaire instruments and fieldwork protocols to meet demands for more and higher quality data collected at the individual-level on priority topics<sup>20</sup> and at the parcel- and crop-levels for minimum core agricultural data per the questionnaire design recommended in World Bank (2015b); (ii) local currencies appreciating against the US dollar (increasing the costs expressed in US dollars); and/or (iii) labor costs (e.g., costs of hiring enumerators, supervisors and trainers)

> 18 We assume away inflation as all cost estimates are presented in 2014 prices in US dollars.

> 19 Of the 18 countries for which survey implementation cost is available, only one country has cost estimates from more than one survey.

> 20 Take, for instance, the demand for reducing the use of proxy respondents to collect in individual-level data on new priority areas that are highlighted by World Bank (2015d) and that include employment, entrepreneurship and asset ownership. Kilic and Moylan (2016) demonstrate that following the recommended practice of conducting private interviews with the adults of the same household for collecting information on personal ownership of and rights to physical and financial assets implies an increase of 31 percent in per household interview cost compared to the status quo that allows for the use of proxy respondents.

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