Employment

IHDS collected labour force participation data based on its extensive income questions. Within each income section, IHDS asked who in the household participated in this activity and what was their level of participation. Thus, when IHDS asked whether the household owns any animals, it then asked who takes care of these animals. Similarly, if the household farmed, IHDS asked who worked on the farm for how many days last year and how many hours on the usual day. Non-farm businesses were treated similarly. The main household respondent also reported who worked for payment in cash or kind. Interviewers were specifically trained to ask about the participation of women and children as well as adult males in these activities. The combination of information from the different activity streams provides a holistic picture of the types of economic activities undertaken by all individuals in the households in the preceding year.

The public use file summarizes these data in one overall work participation measure (wkany) and six subtypes of participation (wkfarm..wkbusiness) for each individual. An individual could be coded as working in one or more of these employment types. Household-level measures are constructed by adding the number of persons working in each type of activity (Nany .. Nbusiness). Only the individual work participation measures (wkany..wkbusiness) are available on the individual data file; only the household totals (Nany .. Nbusiness) are on the household file. Wage and salary workers are divided into three types: salary workers (wksalary) are paid monthly or annually; agricultural workers (wkagwage) are paid daily and report an agricultural occupation (ws3 = codes 60-68); all other daily wage workers are recorded as nonagricultural wage workers (wknonag). For purposes of these dichotomous measures, an individual must have reported working at least 240 hours in that activity in last year to be coded as working.

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