Statistics: Past Activities & Accomplishments

Statistics

Workshops Convened

  • Workshop on Measuring Informal Employment in Developed Countries – October/November 2008, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge Massachusetts, USA. This workshop brought together producers and users of statistics on employment to explore possibilities and challenges involved in capturing, within official statistics, the varied forms of informal and/or non-standard employment – short-term, temporary, contracted, etc. – across developed countries. See the meeting report  and  List of Meeting Documents and Presentations.
  • Workshop on Informal Sector Statistics in Latin America – October 16-18, 2001 in Santiago, Chile in collaboration with ILO/Latin America. Seven Latin American countries participated to assess progress and gaps in the measurement of the informal sector in the region. See the Final Report; see also related  Documents.
  • Statistical Planning Meeting – June 7-8, 2002 to discuss future work to improve statistics in the informal economy, in particular to identify users’ needs and the technical requirements of meting them. See Report and related  Documents.

Publications Prepared

Three major publications were prepared for international organizations. Each contains new and improved statistical information and methods on the informal economy and the situation of informal workers.

  • Progress of the World’s Women 2005: Women, Work and Poverty by Martha Chen, Joann Vanek, Francie Lund, and James Heintz with Renana Jhabvala and Christine Bonner – This publication, which was prepared for UNIFEM as the 2005 edition of its flagship publication, with support from UNDP and the ILO, presents new analytic frameworks and data on the links between informal employment, poverty and gender inequality.
  • Mainstreaming Informal Employment and Gender in Poverty Reduction by Martha Chen, Joann Vanek, and Marilyn Carr (2004) – This publication, which was prepared for the Commonwealth Secretariat, includes a compilation and analysis of the available data on gender segmentation in the informal economy, earnings and the risk of poverty.
  • Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Picture, prepared for the 90th session of the International Labour Conference in 2002 – This publication, which was written by Martha Chen and Joann Vanek for the ILO, provides a statistical picture – using available national data – of the informal economy worldwide. It is mainly based on a compilation of official statistics by Jacques Charmes and his development of the residual method to prepare estimates of informal employment where direct measures are not available. It also includes case studies of India, Mexico and South Africa, which were prepared by national experts.

Expert Groups and Advisory Committees for Statistical Projects Supported

  • Actively participated at meetings of the International Expert Group on Informal Sector Statistics (the Delhi Group) – including the presentation of papers – from the second meeting held in Ankara in 1998 to the present. See a Brief history and purpose of the Delhi Group and a List of all meeting reports.
  • Served on the Advisory Committee for a project on “Informality, Poverty and Growth: Labour Markets in China and India,” 2009-2010.
  • Participated on a Steering Committee for the United Nations Development Accounts Project on Statistics on Informal Sector and Informal Employment, based at UNESCAP, 2006-2009.
  • Served on the ECE/ILO/EUROSTAT Task Force and Steering Committee on the Measurement of Quality of Employment, 2007- 2009. The work of the task force includes a framework for monitoring quality of employment by countries and country pilot reports.
  • Contributed to the efforts of the Millennium Project Task Force on Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality and the Sub-Group on Gender Indicators of the United Nations Interagency Expert Group on MDG Indicators (IAEG), which recommended a background indicator – gender differences in the structure of employment – for monitoring progress toward achieving equality in employment (MDG3) at the national level. This indicator includes data on status in employment, employment in agriculture and non-agricultural sectors, and formal and informal employment. See the background indicator found in the Report of the September 2005  IAEG Subgroup Meeting.

Other Activities

  • Participated in an international conference on “The Informal Sector and Informal Employment” held in Hanoi, Viet Nam, May 6-7, 2010. It was sponsored the Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences (VASS), Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD) in partnership with the Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD),the Developpement Institutions & Analyses de long terme (DIAL), the Department for International Development (DIFID), the General Statistical Office (GSO), the ILO, the Ministry of Labour Invalids and Social Affairs (MOLISSA), UNDP, and the World Bank.

    The purpose of the conference was to:
    1. promote the collection of data on informal sector and informal employment and assess the methods used;
    2. discuss new research findings on informal sector and informal employment and related topics; and
    3. describe new policies for the informal sector and job creation.

    Among those attending were members of the WIEGO Statistics Programme Advisory Committee: Joann Vanek, Ralf Hussmanns, Margarita Guerrero and Jacques Charmes. Joann Vanek presented a paper co-authored with James Heintz:  see “Women and Men in the Informal Economy 2010 - a Statistical Picture: Plans for An Updated Report.” The Viet Nam News – the local English language paper – reported on the conference in a lead article: see Home business needs support (May 7, 2010).

  • Contributed to a project on “place of work” – methodological research and testing on the inclusion of the variable place of work in household surveys – in collaboration with United Nations Statistics Division and ILO Statistics Bureau. An objective of this project was to improve the collection of data on home-based workers and street vendors. A meeting on this work was held in Geneva in 2000, and ILO published the research in the report On Measuring Place of Work in 2002.
  • Convened five meetings of the WIEGO advisory group on statistics to plan and review the Programme’s activities from 1997 to 2002; subsequent meetings have been conducted by teleconference. See reports for past meetings: May 4, 2007 | May 20, 2008.