Myanmar Subnational Phone Surveys (MSPS) of the World Bank

Myanmar subnational phone surveys (MSPS) are designed to monitor household wellbeing at the state and regional level. The first round of MSPS interviews were conducted between November 2022 to March 2023 and collected detailed information regarding labor market participation, education levels, consumption, migration, exposure to economic shocks and coping strategies. In this note, the author validates the representative properties of MSPS at the subnational level and address potential concerns about survey bias. The author also examines MSPS' compatibility with other benchmark household surveys and provide evidence that vulnerable households that are generally overlooked in other telephonic surveys (low-educated, poorer, female‐headed, migrant households) have been well-represented in the MSPS’ survey sample. The author finds that 306 of 330 townships in Myanmar have been covered in MSPS, reflecting approximately 98 percent of the country's population. Shares of demographic indicators at the state and regional levels - such as female population, female headed households, urban population, and age-distribution - obtained from MSPS correspond closely with MLCS-2017 survey. Moreover, the share of displaced populations in MSPS match closely with displacement estimates from UNHCR for the same period. MSPS also has significant representation of minority population based on religious and linguistic characteristics. Finally, the author finds that MSPS yields consistent estimates of education, asset ownership, consumption and labor market indicators when compared to IFPRI's MHWS surveys. Overall, these result underscore the unbiased properties of MSPS surveys and show that these surveys provide reliable estimates of household wellbeing at the subnational level