IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fpr/fcnddp/72.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Validity of rapid estimates of household wealth and income for health surveys in rural Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Morris, Saul Sutkover
  • Calogero, Carletto
  • Hoddinott, John
  • Christiaensen, Luc J. M.

Abstract

Drawing data from four different integrated household surveys in rural areas of Mali, Malawi, and two national surveys in Côte d'Ivoire, this paper tests the validity of proxy measures of household wealth and income that can be readily implemented in health surveys in rural Africa. The assumptions underlying the choice of wealth proxy are described, and correlations with the true value are assessed in two different settings. The expenditure proxy is developed and then tested for replicability in two independent data sets representing the same population. The study found that in both Mali and Malawi, the wealth proxy correlated highly (r $ 0.74) with the more complex monetary value method. For rural areas of Côte d'Ivoire, it was possible to generate a list of just 10 expenditure items, the values of which, when summed, correlated highly with expenditures on all items combined (r = 0.74, development data set; r = 0.72, validation data set). Total household expenditure is an accepted alternative measure of household wealth and income in developing country settings. This paper thus shows that it can be feasible to approximate both household wealth and expenditures in rural African settings without dramatically lengthening questionnaires whose primary focus is on health.

Suggested Citation

  • Morris, Saul Sutkover & Calogero, Carletto & Hoddinott, John & Christiaensen, Luc J. M., 1999. "Validity of rapid estimates of household wealth and income for health surveys in rural Africa," FCND discussion papers 72, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    • Handle: RePEc:fpr:fcnddp:72
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/dp72.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Susser, M. & Susser, E., 1996. "Choosing a future for epidemiology: II. From black box to Chinese boxes and eco-epidemiology," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 86(5), pages 674-677.
    2. Hentschel, J. & Lanjouw, P., 1996. "Constructing an Indicator of Consumption for the Analysis of Poverty. Principles and Illustrations with Reference to Ecuador," Papers 127, World Bank - Living Standards Measurement.
    3. Koopman, J.S., 1996. "Emerging objectives and methods in epidemiology," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 86(5), pages 630-632.
    4. Kaplan, G.A. & Lynch, J.W., 1997. "Whither studies on the socioeconomic foundations of population health?," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 87(9), pages 1409-1411.
    5. Defo, Barthélémy Kuate, 1997. "Effects of socioeconomic disadvantage and women's status on women's health in Cameroon," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 44(7), pages 1023-1042, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Linda Stalker Prokopy & Richard Thorsten, 2008. "The Role of Wealth, Income, and Social Capital in Determining a Household's Choice to Participate in Rural Water-Supply Projects in Peru," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 26(6), pages 1162-1176, December.
    2. Nava Ashraf & James Berry & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2010. "Can Higher Prices Stimulate Product Use? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Zambia," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2383-2413, December.
    3. Makoka, Donald, 2009. "Do rural households smooth their consumption? Applying an asset-based approach to the case of Malawi," MPRA Paper 15398, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Deon Filmer & Kinnon Scott, 2012. "Assessing Asset Indices," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 49(1), pages 359-392, February.
    5. Hoda El Enbaby & Rami Galal, 2015. "Inequality of Opportunity in Individuals' Wages and Households' Assets in Egypt," Working Papers 942, Economic Research Forum, revised Sep 2015.
    6. Migotto, Mauro & Davis, Benjamin & Carletto, Calogero & Beegle, Kathleen, 2005. "Measuring food security using respondents' perception of food consumption adequacy," ESA Working Papers 289068, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Agricultural Development Economics Division (ESA).
    7. Zeller, Manfred & Sharma, Manohar & Lapenu, Cécile & Henry, Carla, 2001. "An operational tool for evaluating poverty outreach of development policies and projects," FCND discussion papers 111, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    8. Gutner, Tammi, 1999. "The political economy of Food subsidy reform in Egypt," FCND briefs 1, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    9. John Sender, 2000. "Struggles To Escape Poverty In South Africa: Results From A Purposive Rural Survey," Working Papers 107, Department of Economics, SOAS University of London, UK.
    10. Alexander Wiredu & Bright Asante & Edward Martey & Aliou Diagne & Wilson Dogbe, 2013. "Impact of NERICA Adoption on Incomes of Rice-Producing Households in Northern Ghana," Journal of Sustainable Development, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 7(1), pages 167-167, December.
    11. Hagen-Zanker, Jessica, 2010. "Modest expectations: Causes and effects of migration on migrant households in source countries," MPRA Paper 29507, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Adam Wagstaff & Naoko Watanabe, 2003. "What difference does the choice of SES make in health inequality measurement?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(10), pages 885-890, October.
    13. June Y. T. Po & Jocelyn E. Finlay & Mark B. Brewster & David Canning, 2012. "Estimating Household Permanent Income from Ownership of Physical Assets," PGDA Working Papers 9712, Program on the Global Demography of Aging.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Glass, Thomas A. & McAtee, Matthew J., 2006. "Behavioral science at the crossroads in public health: Extending horizons, envisioning the future," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(7), pages 1650-1671, April.
    2. John A. Maluccio, 2009. "Household targeting in practice: The Nicaraguan Red de Protección Social," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(1), pages 1-23.
    3. Hentschel, Jesko & Lanjouw, Jean Olson & Lanjouw, Peter & Poggi, Javier, 1998. "Combining census and survey data to study spatial dimensions of poverty," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1928, The World Bank.
    4. Tesfaye Alemayehu Gebremedhin & Stephen Whelan, 2008. "Prices and Poverty in Urban Ethiopia 1," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 17(1), pages 1-33, January.
    5. Aoun, Nael & Matsuda, Hirotaka & Sekiyama, Makiko, 2015. "Geographical accessibility to healthcare and malnutrition in Rwanda," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 135-145.
    6. Kate Birnie & Rachel Cooper & Richard M Martin & Diana Kuh & Avan Aihie Sayer & Beatriz E Alvarado & Antony Bayer & Kaare Christensen & Sung-il Cho & Cyrus Cooper & Janie Corley & Leone Craig & Ian J , 2011. "Childhood Socioeconomic Position and Objectively Measured Physical Capability Levels in Adulthood: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(1), pages 1-13, January.
    7. Jordi Vallverdú, 2018. "Post Truth, Newspeak and Epidemiological Causality," Biomedical Journal of Scientific & Technical Research, Biomedical Research Network+, LLC, vol. 2(1), pages 2267-2268, January.
    8. Richard Mussa, 2013. "Rural--urban differences in parental spending on children's primary education in Malawi," Development Southern Africa, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(6), pages 789-811, December.
    9. repec:dau:papers:123456789/4994 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Lindsay C. Kobayashi & Sarah Frank & Carlos Riumallo-Herl & David Canning & Lisa Berkman, 2019. "Socioeconomic gradients in chronic disease risk behaviors in a population-based study of older adults in rural South Africa," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 64(1), pages 135-145, January.
    11. Rosemary A. McFarlane & Adrian C. Sleigh & Anthony J. McMichael, 2013. "Land-Use Change and Emerging Infectious Disease on an Island Continent," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-21, June.
    12. Richard Mussa, 2014. "Household Expenditure Components and the Poverty and Inequality Relationship in Malawi," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 26(1), pages 138-147, March.
    13. Jesko Hentschel & Peter Lanjouw, 2000. "Household welfare measurement and the pricing of basic services," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(1), pages 13-27.
    14. Coudouel, Aline & Hentschel, Jesko & Wodon, Quentin, 2002. "Измерение И Анализ Бедности [Poverty Measurement and Analysis]," MPRA Paper 10492, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Evans, Clare R. & Williams, David R. & Onnela, Jukka-Pekka & Subramanian, S.V., 2018. "A multilevel approach to modeling health inequalities at the intersection of multiple social identities," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 203(C), pages 64-73.
    16. Baiyegunhi, L.J.S. & Fraser, Gavin C.G., 2010. "Determinants of Household Poverty Dynamics in Rural Regions of the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa," 2010 AAAE Third Conference/AEASA 48th Conference, September 19-23, 2010, Cape Town, South Africa 97078, African Association of Agricultural Economists (AAAE).
    17. Elbers, Chris & Fujii, Tomoki & Lanjouw, Peter & Ozler, Berk & Yin, Wesley, 2007. "Poverty alleviation through geographic targeting: How much does disaggregation help?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 198-213, May.
    18. Frost, Michelle Bellessa & Forste, Renata & Haas, David W., 2005. "Maternal education and child nutritional status in Bolivia: finding the links," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 395-407, January.
    19. De Herdt, Tom, 2004. "Comment mesurer la pauvreté? Une déconstruction méthodologique de l’évolution de la pauvreté monétaire à Kisenso (Kinshasa RDC), 1997-2002," IOB Discussion Papers 2004.06, Universiteit Antwerpen, Institute of Development Policy (IOB).
    20. Heaton, Tim B. & Forste, Renata & Hoffmann, John P. & Flake, Dallan, 2005. "Cross-national variation in family influences on child health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 97-108, January.
    21. Ms. Sònia Muñoz & Stanley Sang-Wook Cho, 2003. "Social Impact of a Tax Reform: The Case of Ethiopia," IMF Working Papers 2003/232, International Monetary Fund.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fpr:fcnddp:72. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifprius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.