ECON F213: Mathematical and Statistical Methods

Assignment
Deadline: November 19, 2016
20 Marks

General Instructions:
 As part of your final submission, upload one PDF document on CMS, answering the relevant
questions. The PDF should be titled “M&S_A_student name” where student name is your full
name.
 Also, please send the log file of stata commands used.

1. National Sample Survey [NSS] Data Extraction and Analysis [20 Marks]
a. Extract the 69th round (Schedule 1.2) ‘Drinking Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Housing
Condition’ raw data into STATA format [5 Marks]
i. You will have to create 8 dictionary files corresponding to the 8 data text files in
the ‘Data’ folder, and then extract the data.
ii. See the extraction process for the 64th & 65th round covered in class for guidance
on the process. All data files in the 69th round correspond to ‘household’ level
data and there is no individual level information.
iii. Show any one of the dictionary files commands in the submission document.
b. Based on the extracted data,
i. Describe the principal sources of drinking water, separately for rural and urban
India [i.e. …% of households using bottled water, etc.]. Show the stata
commands, output and describe the output. [5 Marks]
ii. Among ‘hired’ residential spaces, describe the state-level variation in median
monthly rents paid in urban areas [for state level variables, use the NSS region
code variable and Appendix 2 in the ‘Instrn. To Field Staff_69’ folder]. Show
only one table that shows the state-level distribution and comment on it.
[5 Marks]
Bonus question: Among households that have ‘piped water into dwelling’, what is the average
monthly rent paid in urban India? [3 Marks]

iii. Choose any two variables in the NSS dataset and describe their characteristics in
any manner you deem to be fit [example, state-level distribution, rural-urban
split, across social group, etc.]. [5 Marks]