Duties and responsibilities of DSS:

The DSS is responsible for the policy and strategy management of social statistics development. It conducts planning, implementation and supervision of work policies on realization of the statistical researching program. DSS prepares statistical instruments, instructions, definitions and it determines the samples. The DSS follows up all statistical stages, including collection, processing, analyzing and publication of social statistics; it coordinates the work with users of social statistics, ensures cooperation with ministerial and scientific institutions, the University, and it provides comparability between the social and international statistics. DSS has conducted and is conducting the Labour Force Survey (LFS), the Informal Economy Survey (IES), and the Household Budget Survey (HBS).

DSS elaborates the program of regular surveys and strives to produce data in an expeditious manner. Findings of the surveys comprise important inputs for the economic statistics and can also be used for a general description of living conditions such as: incomes, consumption, expenditure, poverty, health, social welfare, education and jurisprudence, labour force market as well as other data.

The DDS work in the field of statistical research

DSS publications are separately presented for each section:

1.Section of Social Statistics

The Household Budget Survey (HBS) and the Labour Force Survey are conducted within the area of this section.
Statistical data on living standards for the period 2002/03, 2003/04, 2004/05, 2005/06 are published. The goal of the publication of Standards of Living Statistics is to provide statistical data on standards of living in Kosovo, mainly related to income, consumption and data on poverty.
  
Under such circumstances, receiving information through HBS is welcomed in measuring standards of living, measuring the GDP as well as for weights of the consumer prices. The first Household Budget Survey was implemented by the SOK during the period June 2002 – May 2003. This survey was a continuation of World Bank survey on the welfare and poverty monitoring.

The HBS sample consisted of total 2 400 households, selected from 300 enumeration areas. Eights households were surveyed from each enumeration area. Households have been selected randomly. 200 households were surveyed each month which gives the total of 2 400 households surveyed during 12 months period. The sample was extended to rural and urban areas, throughout the territory of Kosovo. The questionnaire contained information on demographic composition of households, including individual data on each and every household member, incomes, consumption and expenditure, living conditions, property ownership, business and agricultural activities, access to basic infrastructure and public services.

The SOK enumerators from seven regional offices collected the household data. The SOK continued with collection, processing and analyzing of data on household budget for 2007 with the same sample size, i.e., 2 400 households but in other enumeration areas and different families. The questionnaire also includes some changes with intention to increase efficiency. This continuation of data collection enables a comparison of data over time on poverty, inequality and other statistics as well.

2. Labour Market Statistics Sector

The Labour Market Statistics Sector has published data for 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006. The Labour Force Survey (LFS) started to be used by the Statistical Office of Kosovo in 2001, with the goal at collection of comparable information on employment and unemployment in the Kosovo territory and to make that information available to local and international institutions.
Being the very first effort of this kind of research in Kosovo, in many aspects, the survey relied on the example of the Living Standard Measurement Survey (LSMS) which was conducted in cooperation with the World Bank during the previous year. At the same time, attempts have been made to implement the relevant international recommendations on Labour Market Statistics published by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and Eurostat.

With the technical assistance of an ILO expert and financial support from a German grant, the LFS field work for 2001 was completed in December 2001 and the findings were presented in the publication “Key Employment Indexes” in June 2002.

Furthermore, a detailed “Methodological Report” was completed in August 2002.
As of that time, the LFS has become an integral part to the SOK action plan, with one annual survey conducted each year during the autumn. Besides some changes, the LFS in 2002 and 2003 were similar to 2001. However, within the framework of the project “Support for the Statistical Office of Kosovo” which started in 2003 funded by the European Agency for Reconstruction (EAR), the LFS produced by the SOK has been reviewed in the aspect of compatibility with EU LFS standards. The first significant result was the approval of a new standard program on LFS table presentation in 2003, which indispensably resulted in developing a new format on analyzing LFS findings and retroactive processing of these LFS tables for 2001. The current report on LFS for 2004 is a continuation of a new report of analyses, which varies from reports produced in 2001 and 2002.

Further changes foreseen for the SOK’s LFS include the entirely review of survey questionnaire for 2004, and ultimately the transformation from an annual survey to first a quarterly and further on a monthly survey. Simultaneously, efforts should be made to improve the quality of the LFS findings by applying additional organizing and methodological measures.

The Labour Force Survey is conducted based on a sample, for example, the required information are collected only from a number of respondents who should be representing the population as a whole. One of the problems in Kosovo was the lack of a sampling frame, which is usually obtained from the general registration of population or from an efficient system of civil registration. Therefore, the SOK's LFS is based on the design of the LFS sample from the World Bank in 2000. Each year the sample includes the selection of 360-400 surveying zones (enumeration areas) in the first stage and a fixed number of households (as of 2002, usually 8) in the second stage, with urban/rural and Albanian/Serb stratification (see Methodological Report for further details, August 2002). Then, the LFS was referred to all members of selected households. In 2003, the LFS eventually included 400 surveying zones (enumeration areas), 3 191 households and 19 510 respondents, and the corresponding figures for 2004 were 399, 3 191 and 19 904, respectively. Including the LFS for 2004 and other LFS which in the future will be in line with EU definitions, the LFS usually covers the habitual residents living in private households and individual questionnaires filled out for each person at the age of 15 years and above in the last day of referring week, specified as a week from Monday to Sunday, before the interview date. To a certain extent, the validity and comparability of the LFS depend on their timely coordination. The LFS interviews for the SOK for 2001 were mainly conducted in December, and in 2004 in September. If the interviews are conducted at a later period of the year, then most likely some economic activities in some sectors (agriculture, construction and tourism) could have come to a stage of decreased activity or a complete stop. Shifting the interview date for a month may cause obstruction in comparing findings on time. Ultimately, the statistics and labour market analyses are completely influenced from the definition of the labour status of each person. As of 2002, the SOK's LFS used the EU classifying procedure presented in chart 1, and the periodical publications of LFS for 2001 and the others do also use this classification. 

3.Jurisprudence Statistics Section

The Jurisprudence Statistics Section has published data for 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. The goal of Jurisprudence Statistics Section is provision of data from this area with intention to make users available with inclusive data. The publications Jurisprudence Statistics Section for 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 contain data for the following areas:
 
Criminal disposed cases (Municipal and District Courts)
Persons accused of criminal offence (Municipal and District Courts)
Persons punished of criminal offence (Municipal and District Courts)
Persons punished of minor offence (Municipal Courts).

Data are related to perpetrators of criminal offences by age group (Adults and Juveniles), gender, nationality, type of punishment, motion for prosecution, type of resolution of cases and indictments, duration of procedure and the type of commission of criminal offence and the number of co-perpetrators in criminal offences. All published data are Kosovo wide and given according to respective chapters of criminal offences and articles. The source of information is the Department of Judicial Administration (DJA).

Section of other social statistics

Other statistics are for Education, Culture and Sports. Of them are published: statistics of on education for 2002/03, 2003/04, 2004/05, 2005/06, 2006/07, and culture statistics for 2004, 2005, and 2006.
Publication of education statistics contains data on the number of children attending kindergarten, the number of children in primary schools, the number of students in the secondary schools, number of children in special schools as well as the number of students in High Schools and University.

The data collection was done through questionnaires. Reporting units are kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools, special schools, Central Administration of the University of Prishtina.

Statistics of Health published these data: statistics of health were published for 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006. Publication on health statistics includes data on public health in Kosovo. The data source is the National Health Institute (NHI) and the Statistical Office of Kosovo (SOK).

Publications include data on the staff employed in Kosovo Health section, in the occupational medicine and Medical Emergency Unit in Pristine, the Family Medicine Centers in Kosovo, the Regional Hospitals, the patients who died in regional hospitals, the number of visits in specialized Clinics and Regional Hospitals, the activities of Regional Hospitals, some of the basic indexes of hospitalization, the patients hospitalized in Regional Hospitals, the Kosovo Clinical University Centre (CUC) staff by age groups and gender, the patients hospitalized in CUC, the disease rate according to ICD-10 in CUC, the number of employees in stomatology clinic, the doctors and stomatologists under specialization by specialization course in Kosovo, the number of employees in Kosovo health by ethnicity, the number of employees in RHA, NIPH, MH, MHC, FMDC. Social welfare statistics for 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006, are already published. This publication includes statistical data form the aspect of the social welfare.
The data source is the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, Nursing-Home, Pensions Administration as well as the house for abandoned children. These data will serve as important tool to get familiar with social environment in Kosovo.

  Publication

For more information: social@ks-gov.net