Living Standards Measurement Study

The Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) is a multi-topic integrated household survey programme launched by the World Bank in 1980 to improve the quality of household data for measuring and analysing welfare in developing countries. Built around a modular questionnaire that links a detailed household interview to community and price questionnaires, the LSMS measures living standards through consumption expenditure rather than income, and connects welfare outcomes to their determinants — employment, education, health, agriculture, and access to services — within a single, internally consistent dataset.