The Integrated Household Survey (IHS) is one of the primary instruments implemented by the Government of Malawi through the National Statistical Office (NSO; www.nso.malawi.net) roughly every 5 years to monitor and evaluate the changing conditions of Malawian households. The IHS data have, among other insights, provided benchmark poverty and vulnerability indicators to foster evidence-based policy formulation and monitor the progress of meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as well as the goals listed as part of the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS). The First Integrated Household Survey (IHS1) was implemented with technical assistance from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the World Bank (WB). The IHS1 was conducted in Malawi from November 1997 through October 1998 and provided for a broad set of applications on policy issues regarding households’ behavior and welfare, distribution of income, employment, health and education. The Second Integrated Household Survey (IHS2; http://go.worldbank.org/JABABM36V0) was implemented with technical assistance from the World Bank in order to compare the current situation with the situation in 1997-98, and to collect more detailed information in specific areas. The IHS2 fieldwork took placed from March 2004 through February 2005. The Third Integrated Household Survey (IHS3) expanded on the agricultural content of the IHS2 and was implemented from March 2010 to March 2011 under the umbrella of the World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) initiative, whose primary objective is to provide financial and technical support to governments in sub-Saharan Africa in the design and implementation of nationally-representative multi-topic panel household surveys with a strong focus on agriculture. A sub-sample of IHS3 sample enumeration areas (EAs) (i.e. 204 EAs out of 768 EAs) was selected prior to the start of the IHS3 field work with the intention to (i) to track and resurvey these households in 2013 in accordance with the IHS3 fieldwork timeline and as part of the Integrated Household Panel Survey (IHPS) and (ii) visit a total of 3,246 households in these EAs twice to reduce recall associated with different aspects of agricultural data collection. The LSMS-ISA initiative provided technical and financial assistance to the design and implementation of the IHPS, alongside DFID, Norway and Government of Malawi funding for the exercise. The IHPS main fieldwork took place during the period of April-October 2013, with residual tracking operations in November-December 2013.
