Integrated Living Conditions Survey 2014

The Integrated Living Conditions Survey (ILCS), conducted annually by the NSS National Statistical Service of the Republic of Armenia, formed the basis for monitoring living conditions in Armenia. The ILCS is a universally recognized best-practice survey for collecting data to inform about the living standards of households. The ILCS comprises comprehensive and valuable data on the welfare of households and separate individuals which gives the NSS an opportunity to provide the public with up to date information on the population's income, expenditures, the level of poverty and the other changes in living standards on an annual basis. Since 1996, when the survey was first implemented in Armenia, the National Statistical Service of the Republic of Armenia (NSS) with the assistance of the World Bank, USAID and other donor organizations, has been putting efforts to continuously improve the quality of data collected through household surveys, as well as to advance its own expertise in arriving at a more accurate assessment of poverty. These efforts have proven to be successful as the data collected through household surveys and the estimates of poverty based on such data became an important input in defining and monitoring the poverty reduction strategy, which is the responsibility of the Government. In 2004, the NSS implemented significant changes to improve the Integrated Living Conditions Survey and to update the poverty assessment methodology, which was used until 2008. With the technical assistance provided by the World Bank:

1. the survey sample frame was updated using the 2001 Population Census frame
2. the sample size was expanded to ensure representativeness of data by regions
3. the ILCS questionnaire was revised to reflect economic and social changes between 1998/99 and 2003, as well as a comprehensive section on employment was added into the questionnaire
4. the interviewers underwent a more profound training

With the co-funding provided within the period of 2007-2011 by the Millennium Challenge Account - Armenia (MCA-Armenia), a state non-commercial organization, the sample size of the ILCS has been expanded to include 7,872 households annually as compared to 5,184 households in 2006 (funded from the state budget only). When activities of MCA-Armenia came to an end in 2012, the sample size was again reduced back to 5,184 households.