An ode to the Demographic and Health Survey Program

How do we know that 10% of children in Kenya were underweight in 2022? Or that Kenya has reduced stunting in children by 22 percentage points between 1993 and 2022? We know because of the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). How do we know that in the Northern region of Uganda, 66% of children age 6-59 months had anemia in 2016? We know because of the DHS. And how do we know that in rural areas of Cambodia, 55% of women age 15-49 who faced gender-based violence never sought help or told their experience to anyone in 2021-22? We know because of the DHS.

As we look toward International Women’s Day on March 8, let’s take a moment to celebrate the DHS. Although the DHS was terminated by the Trump administration the week of February 24, 2025 (more below), the data it collected over 40 years remains a highly valuable resource for researchers, policymakers, program managers and implementers of a range of programs in the 90+ low- and middle-income countries where these surveys have been carried out and at the global level.

Launched in 1984 and expanded over time, the DHS collected nationally representative and open-source data on a wide range of topics, including childhood and maternal mortality, child health, nutrition, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV-AIDS, anemia, and education among others. Questions on spousal violence were added in 1990, followed by a full experimental module on women’s lives and experiences in 1994, and a module to collect information on men’s health, attitudes and behaviors in the late 1990s. These surveys became more consistently collected across countries from about 2000. The data opened up a new field of research on issues such as women’s empowerment and decisionmaking, employment and health status, fertility choices, and men’s attitudes on these issues.

Countless research papers and reports have analyzed the determinants of female empowerment and the relationship between empowerment and asset ownership, contraceptive use, HIV prevalence, child nutrition status, and men’s involvement in antenatal care in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and other regions across the world. Countless PhD students have used the DHS in their dissertations and continue to rely on it throughout their research careers. The DHS has been a platform to test different approaches to measurement, whether it be survey questions or hemoglobin measurement or how to carry out a qualitative study on women’s agency, consent or coercion in their experience of first sex.

DHS surveys are also a primary data source for decisionmakers. Health ministries rely on DHS data to target their health and vaccination programs. Data from the 2017-18 Pakistan DHS on childhood mortality informed a new support program for pregnant women. Data from the 2019-21 India National Family Health Survey on the menstrual health influenced the formulation of the National Menstrual Hygiene Policy. And data from the 2019-20 Gambia DHS on women’s employment were cited by that country’s vice president in affirming the government’s commitment to close the gender parity gap.

Staff of the DHS have strengthened the capacity of national statistics offices on how to implement, disseminate, and analyze large-scale household and/or health facility surveys. Civil society organizations and women’s organizations use the data in their advocacy to change laws and develop policies that boost women’s ownership of land, housing and other assets. Data from the 2016 Uganda DHS on gender-based violence inspired students from Makerere University to create a mobile app to connect survivors to service points. And the DHS program has taught journalists on how to report on demographic and health data from their country.

The termination of the DHS program had an immediate effect on data collection, funding for analyzing the data, and publishing reports in 25 countries. Eighteen of these countries had their latest survey round disrupted (Angola, Burundi, Congo Rep., Congo Dem. Rep., Ethiopia, Guinea, Indonesia, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Philippines, Rwanda, South Africa, Tajikistan, Timor-Leste, Togo, Zambia, Zimbabwe). Four surveys were near completion (Indonesia, Malawi, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe). Two countries have not held their final dissemination event, so the data have not been made public (Mali and Tajikistan). In five countries—Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Uganda—the malaria indicator survey was terminated while the survey of Service Provision Assessment, which collects information on health service availability and quality of care, was halted in Nepal.

The DHS are both a national and international public good. The termination of the program affects policy monitoring and evaluation efforts globally. For instance, DHS data are used to calculate 33 of the indicators supporting the Sustainable Development Goals. One SDG indicator—SDG Indicator 5.6.1 on the proportion of women age 15-49 who make their own informed decisions regarding sexual relations, contraceptive use, and reproductive health care—is a composite scale of three DHS survey items. The joint monitoring program between the DHS and Multi-Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), which has been generating data on the well-being of children and women since the mid-1990s, relied on the DHS for 21% of the 1.2 million indicators in its data warehouse.

There are many current efforts to archive and crowdsource existing DHS data. But donors and countries urgently need to step up to rescue the nearly completed surveys and reports, and to continue data collection efforts in those countries where they were stopped. And it would be good to find an alternative free and open platform to host this and any future work. In the longer term, academics and international statistical bodies should convene policymakers and program implementers to reimagine a new version of the DHS.

The theme of International Women’s Day 2025 is “Accelerate Action” toward gender equality and women’s empowerment. Reliable, robust, and detailed in- and cross-country data are critical to increase momentum to address the systemic barriers and normative biases that women face around the world. Termination of crucial surveys not only goes against the globally accepted principles of data transparency and accountability for public policy decisions, it ultimately harms women and men, and cripples the ability of policymakers who help enable their quest for better lives.