Life in Kyrgyzstan Study

The Life in Kyrgyzstan Study is a research-based, open access, multi-topic longitudinal survey of households and individuals in Kyrgyzstan. It tracks the same 3,000 households and 8,000 individuals over time in all seven Kyrgyz regions (oblasts) and the two cities of Bishkek and Osh. The surveyed households operate 1500 micro enterprises. The data are representative nationally and at the regional level (East, West, North, South).



The survey interviews all adult household members about household demographics, assets, expenditure, migration, employment, agricultural markets, shocks, social networks, subjective well-being, and many other topics. Some of these topics are addressed in each wave while other topics are only addressed in selected waves.



The survey was first conducted in the fall of 2010 and has been repeated three times in 2011, 2012 and 2013, respectively. All members of the households in 2010 were tracked in each wave and new household members were added to the survey and tracked thereafter.



The ‘Life in Kyrgyzstan’ Study was established at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) as a project funded by the German Volkswagen Foundation from 2010 till 2012. The project included several institutions in Central Asia and Europe with DIW Berlin as the consortium leader. The Life in Kyrgyzstan survey for 2013 was funded by DFID as part of the Growth and Labour Market-Low Income Country (GLM-LIC) Programme. The consortium currently includes SIPRI, as the lead institution, ISDC, the University of Central Asia as the main Kyrgyz partner and several research institutions from Asia, Europe and North America.



The ‘Life in Kyrgyzstan’ survey data is publically available: It can be used by any interested party for non-for-profit research, policy analysis and teaching purposes. The survey questionnaires and interviewer manuals can be downloaded on the project website. The data for 2010-2012 can be obtained from DIW Berlin and the data for 2013 can be obtained from the International Data Service Center (IDSC) of the Institute for the Study of Labor (http://idsc.iza.org/lik).