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2002-2003 Living Conditions Monitoring Survey
Third Edition

Zambia, 2002 - 2003
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Reference ID
ZMB-ZSA-LCMS-2002-2003-V1.0
Producer(s)
Central Statistics Office
Metadata
Documentation in PDF DDI/XML JSON
Created on
Jan 16, 2026
Last modified
Feb 26, 2026
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17390
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  • Study Description
  • Data Dictionary
  • Downloads
  • Get Microdata
  • Identification
  • Version
  • Scope
  • Coverage
  • Producers and sponsors
  • Sampling
  • Survey instrument
  • Data collection
  • Data processing
  • Data Access
  • Disclaimer and copyrights
  • Contacts
  • Metadata production
  • Identification

    Survey ID number

    ZMB-ZSA-LCMS-2002-2003-V1.0

    Title

    2002-2003 Living Conditions Monitoring Survey

    Subtitle

    Third Edition

    Country
    Name Country code
    ZAMBIA ZMB
    Study type

    Living Standards Measurement Study [hh/lsms]

    Series Information

    The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has been conducting the household based Living Conditions Monitoring Survey (LCMS) since 1996 for monitoring various Government and donor policies and programmes. The LCMS surveys evolved from the Social Dimensions of Adjustment Priority Surveys conducted in 1991 (PSI) and 1993 (PSII). So far, three LCMS Surveys have been conducted. This is the third (3rd) Series of the LCMS.

    The Living Conditions Monitoring Survey conducted in 2002/2003 was a nation-wide survey.The sample design and sample size used in the survey allow for reliable estimates at province,location (Rural/Urban) and national levels.

    The Living Conditions Monitoring Survey 2002/2003 collected data on the living conditions of households and persons in the areas of education, health, economic activities and employment, child nutrition, death in the households, income sources, income levels, food production, household consumption expenditure, access to clean and safe water and sanitation, housing and access to various socio-economic facilities and infraucture such as schools, health facilities, transport, banks,credit facilities,markets, etc.

    Abstract

    The Living Conditions Monitoring Survey conducted in 2002/2003 was a nation-wide survey. The sample design and sample size used in the survey allow for reliable estimates at province, location (Rural/Urban) and national levels. The main objectives of the LCMSIII Survey was to:

    -Monitor the impact of Government policies, programmes and donor support on the well being of the Zambian population
    -Monitor and evaluate the implementation of some of the programmes envisaged in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP)
    -Monitor poverty and its distribution in Zambia
    -Provide various users with a set of reliable indicators against which to monitor development
    -Provide province specific poverty profiles using different poverty lines
    -Identify vulnerable groups in society and enhance targeting in policy formulation and implementation
    -Provide data required for developing new national and province specific weights for the Consumer Price Index (CPI)
    -Provide data required for estimating Gross Domestic Products’ (GDP) household final consumption

    The Living Conditions Monitoring Survey 2002/2003 collected data on the living conditions of households and persons in the areas of education, health, economic activities and employment, child nutrition, death in the households, income sources, income levels, food production, household consumption expenditure, access to clean and safe water and sanitation, housing and access to various socio-economic facilities and infrastructure such as schools, health facilities, transport, banks, credit facilities, markets, etc.

    Kind of Data

    Sample survey data [ssd]

    Unit of Analysis

    IHousehold, Individual and communities

    Version

    Version Description

    Version 1.0 (Edited, anonymized dataset for public distribution)

    Version Date

    2004-11-01

    Version Notes

    V1.0 is the first and final version of the report

    Scope

    Notes

    The scope of the LCMSIII survey in terms of topics covered was to a large extent guided by the ZAMSIF supported User-Producer committee recommendations. As such, the survey only included extended components of agreed upon topics of policy relevance. In broad terms, the survey included: -

    (i) A set of core living conditions indicators to be monitored over a period of twelve months and
    (ii) The household budget component to be implemented over a period of twelve months.

    The scope of the 2002/2003 LCMS includes indicators on the following: Household characteristics, householfd expenditure, household income, Death in the household, Household food production, Orphanhood, health, education, current economic activity, anthropemetry, Household amenities and houseing conditions, household acess to facilities, household assests, self-assessed poverty and household coping stragies community development issues.

    Topics
    Topic Vocabulary
    Agriculture & Rural Development World Bank
    Food (production, crisis) World Bank
    Education World Bank
    Nutrition World Bank
    Poverty World Bank
    Health World Bank
    Environment World Bank
    Water World Bank
    HIV/AIDS World Bank
    Social Development World Bank
    Infrastructure World Bank
    Malaria World Bank
    Disability World Bank
    Keywords
    Poverty Income Consumption Expenture Child Nutrition

    Coverage

    Geographic Coverage

    The survey is a nationwide coverage. It covered both rural and urban areas in all the nine provinces.

    Universe

    The Survey Covered all de jure Households memebers (usual residents)

    Producers and sponsors

    Primary investigators
    Name Affiliation
    Central Statistics Office Ministry of Finance and National Planning
    Producers
    Name Role
    Government Republic of Zambia Funding the Survey
    Zambia Social investment Fund Managing the survey funds
    WorldBank Group Technical Support
    Food Agriculture Organisation Technical Support
    Funding Agency/Sponsor
    Name Role
    Government Republic of Zambia Funding the Survey
    Other Identifications/Acknowledgments
    Name Role
    The Living Conditions Monitoring Branch staff for having executed the survey successfully and for putting this report together
    Various Zamstats staff and users contributed towards the finalisation of the LCMS survey instruments and report
    All field staff: Enumerators, Supervisors, Master Trainers, Provincial Heads and their Deputies, Drivers and other survey staff
    All data processing staff: Data Entry Clerks and their Supervisors, Computer Technicians and other data processing staff
    All households who provided their valuable time and information

    Sampling

    Sampling Procedure

    The Living Conditions Monitoring Survey III (LCMSIII) was designed to cover 520 Standard Enumeration Areas (SEAs) or approximately 10,000 non-institutionalised private households residing in both the rural and urban areas of all the nine provinces in Zambia. The survey was carried out for a period of 12 months using a rolling sample. For the purposes of this survey, a survey reference month had 36 days instead of 30 or 31 days, as is the case with calendar months. This implies that the 360 days in a year were divided into 10 cycles of 36 days each. As a result 52 SEAs, which is one-tenth of the 520 SEAs, were covered every cycle countrywide.

    The LCMSIII survey employed a two-stage stratified cluster sample design whereby during the first stage, 520 SEAs were selected with Probability Proportional to Estimated Size (PPES). The size measure was taken from the frame developed from the 2000 census of population and housing. During the second stage, households were systematically selected from an enumeration area listing. The survey was designed to provide reliable estimates at provincial, residential and national levels.

    The LCMSIII survey commenced by listing all the households in the selected SEAs. In the case of rural SEAs, households were stratified and listed according to their agricultural activity status. Therefore, there were four explicit strata created in each rural SEA namely, the Small Scale Stratum (SSS), the Medium Scale Stratum (MSS), the Large Scale Stratum (LSS) and the Non-agricultural Stratum (NAS). For the purposes of the LCMSIII survey, about 7, 5 and 3 households were supposed to be selected from the SSS, MSS and NAS, respectively. The large scale households were selected on a 100 percent basis. The urban SEAs were implicitly stratified into low cost, medium cost and high cost areas according to CSO's and local authority classification of residential areas. About 15 and 25 households were sampled from rural and urban SEAs, respectively. However, the umber of rural households selected in some cases exceeded the desired sample size of 15 households depending on the availability of large scale farming households. The selection of households from various strata was preceded by assigning fully responding households sampling serial numbers. The circular systematic sampling method was used to select households. The method assumes that households are arranged in a circle (G. Kalton, 1983) and the following relationship applies:

    Let N = nk,

    Where:
    N = Total number of households assigned sampling serial numbers in a stratum n = Total desired sample size to be drawn from a stratum in an SEA k = The sampling interval in a given SEA calculated as k=N/n.

    Deviations from the Sample Design

    About 15 and 25 households were sampled from rural and urban SEAs, respectively. However, the number of rural households selected in some cases exceeded the desired sample size of 15 households depending on the availability of large scale farming households.The selection of households from various strata was preceded by assigning fully responding households sampling serial numbers. The circular systematic sampling method was used to select households. The method assumes that households are arranged in a circle (G. Kalton, 1983) and the following relationship applies:

    Weighting

    Due to the disproportionate allocation of the sample points to various strata, sampling weights are required to correct for differential representation of the sample at national and sub-national levels. The weights of the sample are in this case equal to the inverse of the product of the two selection probabilities .
    In order to correct for differential representation, all estimates generated from the LCMSIII survey data are weighted expressions

    Survey instrument

    Questionnaires

    The LCMSIII main questionnaire was made of two distinct parts. Part I of the main questionnaire covered the following topics: -

    Demography and migration
    Orphan hood
    Health
    Education
    Current economic activities and labour force
    Child Health Care and Nutrition
    Household amenities and housing conditions
    Household access to facilities
    Household assets
    Self-assessed poverty and household coping strategies, and
    Household food production

    Part II of the main questionnaire covered the following topics: -

    Household expenditure
    Household Income
    Household Non-Farm Enterprises, and
    Deaths in the Household

    The information on household expenditure and consumption was collected using a diary and then transferred to the main questionnaire part II. In addition to the household questionnaire, the LCMSIII survey also collected community price information using a community price questionnaire. The price data is relevant for adjusting household expenditure data for differences in cost of living both in time and space.

    Data collection

    Dates of Data Collection
    Start End
    2002 2003
    Mode of data collection
    • Face-to-face [f2f]
    Data Collectors
    Name Affiliation
    Central Statistics Office Ministry of Finanace and National Planning
    Supervision

    The supervisor was responsible for day-to-day work plan of the enumerators assigned to him/her. Among other things he/she was responsible for:-

    1. Finding The Selected Household: The supervisor was responsible for helping the enumerators find the selected households, using the maps and information established during the Listing stage.They were also responsible for correcting the maps where necessary. Also, help the interviewers to persuade reluctant households to participate. For those households that persist in refusing or those that were not tracable, it was also the supervisors responsibility to replace these households with others from the list of replacement households.
    Data Collection Notes

    Data collection was done by way of personal interviews using two structured questionnaires. These questionnaires are main Household Questionnaire and the price Questionnaire. The main Household questionnaire was divided in to two parts, namely

    1.Main Questionnaire Part 1-used for collecting information on the various aspects of the living conditions of the households.

    2.Main Questionnaire Part II -all the information collected using the household expenditure diary was later on transcribed to this questionnaire in aggregates so as to make computer data capturing easy.This part of the questionnaire was also used to collect information on household income, Non-Farm enterprises and deaths in the households.

    Data processing

    Data Editing

    The data from the LCMSIII survey was processed and analysed using the CSPRO and the Statistical Analysis Sytem (SAS) softwares respectively.Data entry was done from all the provincial offices with 100 percent verfication, whilst data cleaning and analysis was undertaken at CSO's headquarters.

    Data Access

    Access authority
    Name Affiliation URL Email
    Zambia Statistics Agency Ministry of Finanace and National Planning https://nada.zamstats.gov.zm/ info@zamstats.gov.zm
    Confidentiality
    Is signing of a confidentiality declaration required? Confidentiality declaration text
    yes The Agency shall,where statistics are designated as official statistics, protect the confidentiality and identity of the source of data.

    Under the provision of the Statistics ACT no.13 of 2018, ZamStats is obliged to preserve the confidentiality of respondent information in all its census and survey data

    Before being granted access to the dataset, all users have to formally agree:
    1. To make no copies of any files or portions of files to which s/he is granted access except those authorized by the Agency.
    2. Not to use any technique in an attempt to learn the identity of any person, establishment, or sampling unit not identified on public use data files.
    3. To hold in strictest confidence the identification of any establishment or individual that may be inadvertently revealed in any documents or discussion, or analysis. Such inadvertent identification revealed in her/his analysis will be immediately brought to the attention of the Agency
    Access conditions

    Access Conditions: Micro data records are anonymised as per procedures before these are made available to users.

    Micro data files are all free but under access policy Conditions:

    Each dataset has an access policy :Public use file- Accessible to all and - Licensed datasets, accessible under conditions. The dataset has been anonymized and is available as a Public Use Dataset. It is accessible to all for statistical and research purposes only, under the following terms and conditions:

    1. The data and other materials will not be redistributed or sold to other individuals, institutions, or organizations without the written agreement of the Zambia Statistics Agency
    2. The data will be used for statistical and scientific research purposes only. They will be used solely for reporting of aggregated information, and not for investigation of specific individuals or organizations.
    3. No attempt will be made to re-identify respondents, and no use will be made of the identity of any person or establishment discovered inadvertently.
    Citation requirements

    Central Statistics Office(2002/2003). Living Conditions Monitoring Survey Report 2002-2003, Lusaka, Zambia

    Disclaimer and copyrights

    Disclaimer

    ZamStats will not bear any responsibility for the erroneous use of its data by researchers. Users should report inconsistencies in the data (both micro and aggregated) to ZamStats as soon as possible.

    The user of the data acknowledges that the original collector of the data, the authorized distributor of the data, and the relevant funding agency bear no responsibility for use of the data or for interpretations or inferences based upon such use

    Copyright

    Extracts may be published if sourced are duly acknowledged.

    Contacts

    Contacts
    Name Affiliation Email URL
    Head of Dissemination Zambia Statistics Agency info@zamstats.gov.zm https://nada.zamstats.gov.zm/

    Metadata production

    DDI Document ID

    DDI-ZMB-ZSA-LCMS-2002-2003-V1.0

    Producers
    Name Affiliation Role
    Zambia Statistcs Agency Min istry of Finance and National Planning Documentation of the Study
    Date of Metadata Production

    2026-01-12

    Metadata version

    DDI Document version

    Version 1.0 (January 2026)

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