Policy Research Working Paper 9329 Public Disclosure Authorized Big Data for Sampling Design The Venezuelan Migration Crisis in Ecuador Public Disclosure Authorized Juan Muñoz José Muñoz Sergio Olivieri Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Poverty and Equity Global Practice July 2020 Policy Research Working Paper 9329 Abstract The worsening of Ecuador’s socioeconomic conditions and location in the country. The total estimated population the rapid inflow of Venezuelan migrants demand a rapid represents about 3 percent of the total Ecuadoran popu- government response. Representative information on the lation. Venezuelans settled across urban areas, mainly in migration and host communities is vital for evidence-based Quito, Guayaquil, and Manta (Portoviejo). The strategy policy design. This study presents an innovative method- implemented may be useful in designing similar exercises ology based on the use of big data for sampling design of in countries with limited information (that is, lack of a a representative survey of migrants and host communities’ recent census or migratory registry) and scarce resources populations. This approach tackles the difficulties posed by for rapidly gathering socioeconomic data on migrants and the lack of information on the total number of Venezuelan host communities for policy design. migrants—regular and irregular—and their geographical This paper is a product of the Poverty and Equity Global Practice. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://www.worldbank.org/prwp. The authors may be contacted at [email protected]. The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent. Produced by the Research Support Team Big Data for Sampling Design: The Venezuelan ∗ Migration Crisis in Ecuador Juan Muñoz1, José Muñoz2 and Sergio Olivieri3 JEL: C8, C83, F22 Keywords: Sampling design, stratification, Big Data, migration, Venezuela, weight calibration, maximum entropy. ∗This paper has benefited from comments by Ana Aguilera, Tara Vishwanath, Nandini Krishnan, Beatriz Godoy, Teresa Reinaga, Ana Rivadeneira, Tanja Goodwin, Carlos Vayas from Telefonica de Ecuador, Alexandra Escobar and Paul Guerrero from UNICEF - Ecuador. We are very grateful to Roberto Carrillo (ex-Director of NSO – INEC acronym in Spanish) and Christian Garces, Xavier Núñez and Francisco Céspedes from the sampling division of INEC for facilitating access to update information from the 2010 Census. Different versions of the paper benefitted with comments from participants to Conference on Inclusion of Refugees in National Surveys that Measure Poverty, October 2-3, 2019, Washington, DC; Research Conference on Forced Displacement, January 16-18, 2020, Copenhagen; and Urban Migration & Forced Displacement: Data Collection in Fragile States, February 27, 2020, Washington DC The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent 1 Sistemas Integrales, Santiago, Chile. 2 Telefónica de Ecuador. 3 World Bank, Poverty and Equity Global Practice. I. Introduction The República Bolivariana de Venezuela is experiencing a multifaceted humanitarian, economic, and social crisis, which has led to an exodus without precedent in the region. By September 2019, approximately 4.3 million people had left the República Bolivariana de Venezuela. This exodus also resembles the refugee crisis experiences in other conflict states, such as the Syrian Arab Republic, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Southern Sudan. Eighty percent of the Venezuelan emigrants migrated to Latin America, with the main recipient countries being Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador. At the beginning of the Venezuelan exodus, Ecuador was characterized as a country of transit to Peru or other Southern Cone countries, such as Chile and Argentina. Since 2015, more than 1.2 million Venezuelans have passed through Ecuador in a "humanitarian corridor".4 However, between 2015 and September 2019, almost 400,000 Venezuelans decided to settle in Ecuador.5 The hardening of migration policies in other countries of the region, combined mainly with reasons of family reunification and the search for better economic opportunities, helped persuade many migrants to consider Ecuador as a destination country. The migration stock in Ecuador tripled between 2017 and 2018. By August 2019, it had almost doubled again when compared to the same period the previous year (Figure I-1). FIGURE I-1: THEY ARE NO LONGER IN TRANSIT; MORE AND MORE ARE DECIDING TO STAY 400,000 389,103 MONTHLY ARRIVALS 350,000 ACCUMULATED MIGRATORY BALANCE (from JANUARY 2015) 300,000 248,480 250,000 200,000 94,694 150,000 33,942 10,058 97,688 93,303 93,303 91,356 91,356 90,828 90,828 89,015 89,015 87,828 87,828 86,924 86,924 82,117 82,117 81,142 81,142 76,469 76,469 73,284 73,284 72,556 72,556 70,950 70,950 70,842 70,842 67,434 67,434 100,000 62,037 52,166 52,166 48,758 48,758 47,071 47,071 39,178 39,178 30,397 30,397 30,345 30,345 30,073 30,073 29,631 29,631 26,988 26,988 26,839 26,839 16,869 16,869 14,716 14,716 14,647 14,647 13,726 13,726 13,130 13,130 13,071 13,071 12,767 12,767 12,400 12,400 50,000 12,082 11,344 11,344 10,862 10,862 10,801 10,801 9,991 9,991 9,652 9,652 9,540 9,540 8,890 8,890 8,760 8,760 8,361 8,361 8,012 8,012 7,938 7,938 7,869 7,869 7,456 7,456 7,278 7,278 7,161 7,161 6,710 6,710 6,205 6,205 6,186 6,186 6,102 6,102 5,982 5,982 5,659 5,659 - JUL JUL JUL JUL JUL SEP SEP SEP SEP JAN JAN JAN JAN JAN NOV NOV NOV NOV MAY MAY MAY MAY MAY MAR MAR MAR MAR MAR 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 Source: Own estimates based data from the Ministry of the Government of Ecuador, August 2019. The Venezuelan exodus coincided with the Ecuadoran economic crisis, but it was not the cause. Oil prices have been falling since mid-2014, and, as a result, the Ecuadoran government had to shrink spending, which was the main engine of growth. The economy stagnated in 2015 and contracted by 1.2 percent in 2016.6 Due to fiscal pressures, the coverage of Ecuador's main conditional cash transfer program was also reduced. Working conditions deteriorated. Unemployment, underemployment, and informality rates increased to levels not seen in 10 years. Between 2013 and 2018, approximately 66,000 good jobs were lost. This 4 http://reporting.unhcr.org/node/2543. 5 Ministry of Government of Ecuador. Available at https://www.ministeriodegobierno.gob.ec/migracion/. 6 World Bank (2018). 2 significant reduction was partially offset by the increase in jobs offering fewer hours per week and lower wages, or a combination of both. The worsening of socio-economic conditions demands a government's rapid response. To do so, representative information on migrants and host communities is vital for evidence-based policy design. However, two main challenges are associated with conducting a representative survey of the host and migrant populations. Even though Ecuador has a reliable and updated sampling frame for the resident population, the total number of Venezuelans and their geographical location in the country were not available at the time of the survey.7 The official data provide only the net flows of migrants who entered and exited the country through an official gate. However, no official estimates exist for those migrants who did not register their entry into the country to add up to the total Venezuelan migrant population. In 2019, Ecuador was in a weak position relative to its neighboring countries in the availability of such data. Peru gathered the National Census in 2017, and Colombia had collected not only the 2018 National Census but also a national migratory registry. Unlike other Latin American host countries, Venezuelan migrants were expected to be spatially clustered in Ecuador throughout the corridor. For instance, while in Peru, over 84 percent of migrants are in Lima, in Ecuador, it is estimated that only around 60 percent of Venezuelan migrants live in five main cities – Quito, Guayaquil, Cuenca, Manta and Santo Domingo.8 This phenomenon is likely standard in this type of population's movements, a fact that has significant implications on both the survey's intended analyses and its sampling design. From an analytical standpoint, assessing the impact of immigrants on the host population depends on their spatial proximity and their relative density. From the sampling viewpoint, the clustering of immigrants would help to implement a design that has proven to be successful in conducting similar surveys elsewhere. For instance, such as those addressed to immigrants from the rest of the continent in South Africa (Plaza, Navarrete and Ratha, 2011); Syrian refugees and their hosts in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraqi Kurdistan (World Bank, 2018, and Aguilera, Krishnan, Muñoz, Russo, Sharma and Vishwanath, 2020); and Myanmar Rohingya in Bangladesh (World Bank, 2020 b).