Monitoring Informality for Social Policy Making: The OECD Key Indicators of Informality based on Individuals and their Household (KIIbIH)

This paper describes the compilation of the OECD Key Indicators of Informality based on Individuals and their Household (KIIbIH) database, a new dataset that builds upon household surveys to provide comparable indicators and harmonised data on the socio-economic characteristics of informal workers in 50 countries across North and sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean. Whereas other publicly available harmonised statistics on informality largely draw upon labour force surveys to estimate the size of informal employment, the KIIbIH uses household surveys to provide more information on the socio-demographic and economic status of workers and their household. Overall, the database provides useful information for policy makers when developing their formalisation strategy and designing policies to tackle the vulnerability of informal workers taking into account their household context.