Central Statistics Organization of Afghanistan

Kabul, 31 January 2017 – Central Statistics Organization (CSO) of Afghanistan launched the highlights of Nimroz Socio-Demographic and Economic Survey during a press event at CSO.

CSO with the support of other government entities and the people of Nimroz conducted the SDES in Nimroz, as the eleventh province that was covered with the technical support of United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

The SDES is designed as a long term project to gradually gather information on population from all 34 provinces. This survey has also built CSO staff capacity in conducting large scale surveys. SDES provides village level data for local development policy and planning.

THE MAIN OBJECTIVES OF THE SURVEY ARE:

• Gathering data for evidence based decision making, policy, planning and management,
• Providing data for business and industries,
• Providing data about vulnerable populations,
• Providing data for informed humanitarian assistance, and
• Availability of data for research and analysis,

The SDES is conducted in a way that it covers every other household (i.e. 50%) in a given area with survey questionnaires and the remaining every other households are asked the name of the head of the household and the number of members of the household.  

SDES GATHERS INFORMATION ON:

• Age, gender, education, literacy, employment issue, people on jobs, fertility, mortality, birth registration, parents’ living status, housing characteristics (some of the indicators gathered are similar to those gathered in a census).

One of the major differences of the SDES with other surveys is that data for the SDES is gathered at the village level.

Some findings of Socio-demographic and Economic Survey include:

• The total population of Nimroz 51.5% is male and 48.5% is female. Zaranj Provincial Capital comprises 85.9 percent of the total population of Nimroz province. 
• The 0 – 4 age group comprised the biggest population proportion (17.6 percent) among all the age groups in Nimroz while age group (10-14) comprised 15.2% of the total population of Nimroz. There were 100 women for every 106 men.
• Literacy rate for people aged 15 and above in four districts of Nimroz is 38.5%, while among youth between the ages of 15-24, it is 55.3%. Literacy rate among the population 10 years old and above is 46.2%.
• Net attendance rate in high school in Nimroz was 12.2%.
• Birth registration rate in four districts of Nimroz is 60.0%.
• Around 2.3 percent of the Nimroz population 5 years or older at the time of the survey had at least one functional difficulty in seeing, hearing, walking, remembering, communicating, or self-caring.
• Percentage of population with economic activities was at 40.8, which means they were engaged in economic activities in the last six months and more.
• 58.2% of the population was not engaged in economic activities for the past 12 months before the survey.
• Among the population not engaged in economic activities 77.6% were busy at home and 15.4 percent were busy in studying.
• In Nimroz province among married women aged 15 or above, 9 out of ten (91.1%) had given birth.
• Zaranj city had the highest ratio of married women (90.9%) between the ages of 15-49 who had given birth.
• Mortality in four districts of Nimroz for the past two years before the survey was more than 2,000 deaths, where mortality was higher for men (59.3%) than for women (40.7%).
• Newborn mortality 1 year before the survey comprised 6.4% where male infants made the higher number of infants deaths 7.4% than female infants (5.5%).
• 28.8 percent of the total mortality was children below the ages of 5.
• Average household size in Nimroz was 7.3 people.
• Wood was the main source of energy (49.8%) for cooking in the households.
• 73.1% of households in Nimroz had access to city power in their houses.
• 78.0 percent of households in four districts of Nimroz Province reported to be having an improved sanitation toilet facility.
• 12.7 percent of households in four districts of Nimroz had access to improved water resources.

Central Statistics Organization of Afghanistan would like to thank the people of Nimroz who took part in successfully conducting the survey and hopes that policy makers and planners will use the findings of this survey to improve the lives of the population in Nimroz.

For more information: Central Statistics Organization of Afghanistan

Phone: 0202104338 / 0202104093 / 0202104095