The Use of Total Assets as a Proxy for Socioeconomic Status in Northern Vietnam

Abstract

Recently, total assets have become a popular method to capture socioeconomic status (SES) for health research/intervention done in developing countries. Although, this method is suitable for areas in a rural setting, there are 2 major issues in applying this method: (a) which durable assets/infrastructure or housing characteristics truly reflect the family SES and (b) how to aggregate different variables to get a derived index of SES and produce a range of critical points differentiating socioeconomic levels. This study aims to validate the use of total asset as proxy for SES by addressing these issues. Results indicated that (a) variables reflecting family SES in rural setting area include variables capturing access to utilities and infrastructure, housing characteristics, and durable asset ownership; (b) principal component analysis is a suitable method to construct a derived index from multiple variables; and (c) the derived index is a valid indicator for SES in rural setting area.

Financial Risks From Ill Health in Myanmar

“…16-18 The correlates used in this study are indicators of rural residence, household composition (size, presence of over-60-year-old members in the household, presence of a child younger than 5 years, female as household head), the highest level of education for an adult female family member (15 years and older), ethnicity (membership of the majority Bamar group), and economic status based on household rankings using a wealth index constructed using principal components methods. 19 Two indicators of disease severity were also included (self-reported “bad or very bad” health by survey respondent and whether someone with chronic illness was a household member). An indicator for a pregnant woman was included given the likely impact on health care use.…”

Approaches and Alternatives to the Wealth Index to Measure Socioeconomic Status Using Survey Data: A Critical Interpretive Synthesis

“…One of the first multi-country comparative studies suggested that the use of wealth indices resulted in smoother declines in stunting by wealth quintiles when compared to household consumption in LMICs (Sahn and Stifel 2003). This evidence is supported by the correlation of wealth index quintiles with low birthweight, education level, and occupation in the Vietnamese context, indicating that the index was capturing both a measure of social class and health outcomes (Vu et al 2011). Another evaluation used Bayesian information criterion to predict fertility rates with several SES proxies, finding that a wealth index performed better than all other measures, including consumption measures (which predicted almost no variation in fertility) (Bollen et al 2002).…”

Effect of Facilitation of Local Stakeholder Groups on Equity in Neonatal Survival; Results from the NeoKIP Trial in Northern Vietnam

“…Household economic status was assessed by the use of an asset index and calculated by principal component analysis. It can be argued that this method has some drawbacks, but in general the method is sound [ 22 ]. A mix of assets and household characteristics further strengthens the validity of the method.…”