About 60 percent of rural households indeveloping countries are estimated to fully or partly dependon livestock for their livelihoods. Available householdlevel livestock data, however, are insufficient toappreciate the contribution of livestock to householdlivelihoods, including both the monetary and non-monetarybenefits provided by farm animals. This challenges thedesign and implementation of effective investments in thesector. This paper presents a livestock module formulti-topic household surveys, which targets improvedlivestock-related questions therein. The livestock modulefor multi-topic household surveys has been jointlyelaborated by the FAO, the ILRI (International LivestockResearch Institute) and the World Bank, as part of theLivestock Data for Better Policies in Africa Project. Itconsists of a core set of questions, which quantify bothlivestock herd and the various contributions of farm animalsto household livelihoods, including cash income, food,manure, draft power and hauling services, savings andinsurance and social capital. It then includes additionaldetailed questions on livestock characteristics (e.g.breeding, branding, etc.), husbandry practices (e.g.feeding, watering, etc.) and outputs (e.g. milk, dung, etc.)which, depending on the country, may or may not be includedin multi-topic household surveys. The module is a publicgood, which has been used to develop multi-topic householdquestionnaires in collaboration with country governments inNiger, Tanzania and Uganda. Data from these surveys will befreely available for analysis in 2012 and 2013, providing anunprecedented opportunity to enhance the understanding ofthe livestock poverty-wellbeing linkages at the household level.
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