Uruguay

1.Title of the survey:

Continuous Household Survey (Encuesta Contínua de Hogares).

2.Organization responsible for the survey:

General Directorate of Statistics and Census (Dirección General de Estadística y Censos (DGEC), Presidencia de la República Oriental del Uruguay).

3.Coverage of the survey:

(a) Geographical:

(b) Persons covered:

The economically active population comprises persons aged 14 years and over.

4.Periodicity of the survey:

The survey is continuous. The periodicity of publication of the results has been half-yearly since 1968.

5.Reference period:

The week prior to the interview week for labour force, employment, unemployment and hours of work, and the month prior to the interview month for income.

6.Topics covered:

The survey provides information on employment, unemployment, underemployment, hours of work, income, duration of unemployment, industry, occupation, status in employment and level of education/qualifications.

7.Concepts and definitions:

(a) Employment:

Also included are:

1. employed persons temporarily absent from their work because of illness or injury, holiday or annual leave, maternity or parental leave, educational leave, absence without leave, bad weather, labour-management disputes, mechanical breakdown or other reduction in economic activity, etc.;
2. unpaid family workers temporarily absent from their work, provided they usually work at least one-third of the normal working day;
3. full-time or part-time workers who looked for another job during the reference week;
4. persons who did any work for pay or profit during the reference week while being subject to compulsory schooling; or retired and receiving a pension; or registered as jobseekers at an employment office, or receiving unemployment benefits;
5. full-time or part-time students working full time or part time;
6. paid or unpaid apprentices and trainees;
7. private domestic servants.
8. members of producers' co-operatives;
9. volunteer and career members of the armed forces, and members of civilian services equivalent to military service (excluding conscripts, who live in collective households and are not covered by the survey).

Excluded from the employed and the economically active population are persons engaged in their own housework and persons doing unpaid voluntary community or social work.

(b) Underemployment:

"Underemployment by reason of too few hours worked covers those persons who are members of the labour force but who contrary to their wishes have a job of shorter duration than the normal working day, and who are looking for or would accept extra work. The general average of hours worked according to the Household Survey is about 40 hours a week, which may be reasonably considered as normal working hours. However, the question in the survey questionnaire is "Would you be willing to work at least 30 hours a week?". Existing information therefore only provides the number of persons who answered yes to that question, i.e., who were working for under 30 hours a week and said they wanted to work longer hours. It excludes persons who work between 30 and 40 hours a week and want to work longer.

Underemployment by reason of too small a volume of work includes persons with work who belong to the unpaid labour force and who are looking for or would accept an extra activity irrespective of the number of hours worked. The numbers of such persons are found by taking own-account workers and unpaid family workers who work more than 30 hours a week and are looking for other additional employment."

(c) Unemployment:

It also includes:

1. persons laid off temporarily or for an indefinite period without pay, and persons temporarily suspended who are receiving benefit from unemployment insurance;
2. persons who are currently available for work and have made arrangements to start work within a given period (30 days);
3. persons who were not looking for work because they were awaiting a reply;
4. full-time or part-time students who were looking for full-time or part-time work;
5. apprentices who were working for under 15 hours and were looking for a job;
6. seasonal workers awaiting agricultural or other seasonal work, and share croppers."

Persons are deemed to have looked for work during the reference period if they applied to agencies or directly to an employer, inserted or answered advertisements in newspapers, magazines, etc., approached friends ore relatives, or took other action (which must be specified) to find work.

(d) Hours of work:

(e) Informal sector:

(f) Usual activity:

8.Classifications used:

Employed persons and unemployed persons in the strict sense of the term are classified by industry, occupation and status in employment. All persons covered by the survey are classified by level of education.

(a) Industry:

(b) Occupation:

(c) Status in employment:

1. Private sector wage earner or salaried employee,
2. Public sector wage earner or salaried employee,
3. Member of producers' co-operatives,
4. Owner (with employees) or employer,
5. Own-account worker, with an established business,
6. Own-account worker, without an established business,
7. Unpaid worker.

It is compatible with the International Classification of Status in Employment (ICSE).

(d) Level of education/qualifications:

1. Primary education (basic level),
2. Secondary education (first level),
3. Secondary education (second level),
4. Technical education,
5. Teachers' training college,
6. University education,
7. Army,
8. Others.

9.Sample size and design:

(a) The sample frame:

For the selection of second-stage units (households), the frame used was the list of addresses to be found in the Enumeration Control Sheets of the 1985 Population and Housing Census.

(b) The sample:

(1) The sample for the Department of Montevideo is a two-stage stratified design whose strata were fixed in accordance with the occupation of economically active persons covered by the last (October 1985) General Population Census, taking as a stratification unit the first-stage sampling unit.

To stratify the census zones two classes of occupations were chosen from the COTA-1970: Class A comprises major groups 0, 1, 2, 3 and groups 40, 41 and 89; Class B comprises the other major groups and groups. The electronic archives of the Population Census were processed, the economically active persons in each zone being classified, by kind of occupation, into the two classes just mentioned. To group the census zones into strata it was ascertained whether Class A or Class B occupations predominated in each zone, taking as predominant the class applying to at least two-thirds of the economically active persons in the zone. In this way three strata were formed, as follows:

1. The stratum in which Class A occupations predominated;
2. The stratum in which Class B occupations predominated;
3. The stratum in which neither class predominated over the other, and the zone could therefore not be classed in either of the previous strata.

The size of each stratum was measured by the number of dwellings covered by the census and located in the zones of the stratum. The number of households to be interviewed was distributed proportionately to the size of the strata. The size of the monthly sample of the Montevideo Household Survey was increased over that of previous years, so as to cover unoccupied dwellings which previously had to be replaced.

In each stratum first-stage units were selected by systematic sampling with a random starting point and constant intervals equal to the inverse of the sampling fraction on a list of zones that were ranked by geographical area codes.

In each zone selected, similar systematic sampling was used to choose the three households (second-stage units) to be interviewed.

The size of the annual sample for Montevideo was 11,949 households in 1987 (sampling fraction: 3.5 per cent), and 9,470 households in 1988 (sampling fraction: about 2.25 per cent).

(2) Sample for the interior of the country: The interior of the country was divided into two strata: urban areas and rural areas. The rural stratum is not represented in the sample.

The stratum covering urban areas was divided into two strata: (1) a stratum of census zones in major urban areas (more than 5,000 inhabitants in the 1985 Census); and (2) census zones in minor urban areas (between 900 and 5,000 inhabitants).

In major urban areas, only the capital cities of Departments were included in the sample, except in the Department of Canelones, into which the towns of Las Piedras and Pando were also incorporated. The number of localities or minor urban areas to be selected was determined in such a way that the Departments in the interior of the country were each represented by one locality, with the exception of Canelones which, because of the number of these areas in the stratum, was represented by five localities in the sample. The localities were selected by simple random sampling, with probability proportional to the size of each locality.

In each stratum the sample was extracted by systematic selection, with a random starting point and constant interval, of the number of census zones (first-stage units) corresponding to each.

After fixing the size of the annual sample in each Department and stratum, the final sample size was as follows (in numbers of zones):

Major areas

3,195

Minor areas

747

Urban interior areas

3,942

Montevideo

3,983

Urban total

7,925

The sampling fraction for the household sample frame was the same in all urban areas of the country, so that the estimates obtained are self-weighted.

For each first-stage unit drawn, three households (second-stage units) were selected by systematic sampling.

In 1988, the annual sample size was of 10,116 dwellings in major urban areas, and 1,887 dwellings in minor urban areas; the sampling fraction was 3.23 per cent.

The annual sample is spread throughout the year, the zones being allotted randomly each month.

(c) Rotation:

10.Field work:

(a) Data collection:

(b) Substitution of ultimate sampling units:

11.Quality controls:

The quality of the field work is verified by re-interview of 10 per cent of the households, and coding undergoes a 100 per cent revision. During compilation of data a 100 per cent check is made on digitalisation.

12.Weighting the sample:

The sample is self-weighted, the results being expressed in percentages.

13.Sampling errors:

14.Adjustments:

(a) Population not covered:

(b) Under/overcoverage:

(c) Non-response:

15.Seasonal adjustment:

No adjustment is made for seasonal variations.

16.Non-sampling errors:

Not available.

17.History of the survey:

The Continuous Household Survey has been carried out since the second half of 1968 and provides permanent coverage of the Department of Montevideo. Until April 1980 it attached special importance to ascertaining the rate of unemployment. Between 1981 and 1984 it was extended to the capital cities of the Departments of the remainder of the country and included investigation of household income. Only in 1981 were the rural zones of the interior of the country included.

In July 1981 the design of the sample for the Department of Montevideo was revised and has been unchanged ever since. Until 1984 urban area strata were fixed according to household income: low, medium, medium-high, and high.

The survey is now (1989) being completely revised.

18.Documentation:

For the results of the survey see:

Presidencia de la República Oriental del Uruguay, Dirección General de Estadística y Censos: "Encuesta Contínua de Hogares" (Montevideo); published half-yearly until 1979 and since then, annually. This publication contains half-yearly results and is issued six months after the reference year.

Also available on request are the results of the survey in the form of tables, diskettes, etc.