India Human Development Survey Panel (IHDS, IHDS-II), 2005, 2011-2012 (ICPSR 37382)

1. The India Human Development Survey (IHDS) is a collaborative research program produced by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi, and the University of Maryland. The data collection is funded primarily by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

2. The values for state and district identification codes correspond to the 2001 Indian census.

3. The variables HHWAVES [IN ALL 18 DATASETS], PWAVES [IN DATASETS 1-6 AND 13-18], and PSUWAVES [IN ALL 18 DATASETS] report which waves a household, person, or PSU was interviewed.

4. Household and individual identification numbers have been recalculated so that the same person has the same ID in each wave. With the cross-sectional appended files now using the wave-specific PERSONID the old identification variables are also included in the new files. Also added to the files are:

   • HHBASE: The household ID for the base household in the original IHDS (survey wave + complete hh id at first entry into IHDS). [IN ALL 18 DATASETS]
   • HHFAM2: The single digit ID (1-6) for each of the split households if the original IHDS household was divided by IHDS-II (+hhbase = unique HH id in wave 2). [IN ALL 18 DATASETS]
   • PBASE: A unique person ID within each original IHDS base household. Thus, HHBASE and PBASE uniquely identify every individual whether in IHDS, IHDS-II, or both waves (unique multisurvey person id). [IN DATASETS 1-6 AND 13-18]

5. Part of the work by the Principal Investigators to harmonize the data was to make the variable names match between the two data collection waves. All variables in these panel data are named as they are in IHDS-II. For instance the variable C07X represents "Last month's consumption of meat, chicken or fish" in IHDS-II. But it was named C08X in the original IHDS. Now, in these panel data, the variable name from IHDS-II is maintained. Both of these variables exist in the household data files [DATASETS 7-12].

6. Some question content changed between surveys. For instance the monthly consumption of electricity and fuels was asked separately in two questions in IHDS-II (CO21 and CO22) but was a single question in the original IHDS (CO20). In the merged panel data there are variables CO21 and CO22 defined only for IHDS-II (their values for IHDS households are missing values) plus an additional variable CO21_22 which contains the value for fuel and electricity consumption from the original IHDS (named CO20 there) and which adds together CO21 and CO22 for IHDS-II. This is the best approximation for comparing values across the two surveys. The variable labels try to make this as clear as possible. So, in the merged panel files, the CO21 variable specifies "HQ24 14.21 HH fuel Rs [IHDS2]", indicating that it is only available in IHDS-II. The newly created variable, CO21_22 has a variable label of "HQ24 14.21,22 Fuel, electricity [est. as in IHDS1]" which indicates that it is the best estimation of what the combined value is in IHDS-II. These variables exist in the household data files [DATASETS 7-12].

7. There are an additional small number of variables where the answer categories for the same question changed between the two surveys. In these instances there are two variables in the merged panel files -- one that repeats the exact categories in each survey and a revised version that tries to create a combined variable that is more comparable across surveys. For example, SA4, the type of toilet, had four response categories in each survey, but the categories changed between the original IHDS and IHDS-II. The Principal Investigators repeated the four categories in each survey in SA4X, but have also created a more comparable variable, SA4, which has only three response categories that are more comparable across the two waves. The variable label designates that SA4X has the "original" values, while SA4 has "revised" values. Both of these variables exist in the household data files [DATASETS 7-12].

8. The values reported for all questions regarding finances (income, debt, expenses, investments, etc.) are in Indian Rupees.

9. Errors in the data may exist, but the Principal Investigators decided to leave the data as is so that it represents an accurate reflection of interviewee's responses.

10. In order to maintain the confidentiality and help protect the disclosure of the participating respondents ICPSR created public-use and restricted-use renditions of each data file. ICPSR did not alter the data in any capacity within the restricted-use rendition of the files. For the public-use rendtions ICPSR revised the data files by:

    • Masking valid entries of string variables pertaining to geography or occupation.
    • Masking valid entries of caste designations.
    • Top- and/or bottom-coding variables relating to sensitive topics (i.e., number of abortions) or that have the potential to be identifying (i.e., household composition).

    A list of the individual variables that were masked or recoded in any manner is available as a processing note in the beginning of each codebook.

11. Additional information and resources related to IHDS are available from DSDR through the IHDS data guide and the IHDS-II data guide.

12. For additional information regarding the India Human Development Survey, please visit the India Human Development Survey Web site.

2019-11-19 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

• Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.