Using an Asset Index to Assess Trends in Poverty in Seven Sub-Saharan African Countries

Booysen, Frederik; Berg, Servaas van der; Burger, Ronelle; Maltitz, Michael von; Rand, Gideon du

doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2007.10.008

Cited by 311 publications

(229 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…However, in all cases we regressed log of asset index on set of individual characteristics (age, family size, sex and educational attainment), and spatial variations to examine how education featured in the accumulation of assets. It was possible to infer that in at least a quarter of cases the share of education in explaining the variation in asset index was more than 25%, which is quite signicant and large 9 . Age, 9.…”

Section: Governance and Human Capitalmentioning

confidence: 93%

The Making of the Middle-Class in Africa: Evidence from DHS Data

Shimeles

Ncube

2015

The Journal of Development Studies

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E S ABSTRACT The Making of Middle Class in Africa: Evidence from DHS DataThis paper presents evidence on the making of the middle class in Africa by exploiting a comparable micro data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) for thirty-seven countries over two decades consisting of over seven hundred thousand household histories. We constructed a pseudo-panel to examine the dynamics of middle class in blocks of four periods covering the period 1990-2011. A key finding is that there was significant mobility of the middle class to the upper class in the last two decades with very few slipping back to poverty with obvious difference across countries. The paper approached the making of a middle class in Africa from institutional and policy perspectives. Initial conditions such as level of development in early decades, quality of institutions and most of all ethnic fractionalization play a significant role in determining the growth of the middle class in recent years. In addition we found evidence suggesting that the size of the middle class is higher in countries where mutual trust among citizens tends to be stronger. The role of education feature prominently in the making of the middle class. In about 30 of the 83 country-level regression decompositions we conducted for the asset index, the contribution of education exceeded 25% in explaining the overall variance in the asset index. The 'premium' (or 'return') individuals obtain from achieving primary, secondary and tertiary level of education is unambiguously high compared with no education, but the effect decreases as the mean level of schooling increases.JEL Classification: D31, J15

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Section: Governance and Human Capitalmentioning

confidence: 93%

The Making of the Middle-Class in Africa: Evidence from DHS Data

Shimeles

Ncube

2015

The Journal of Development Studies

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“…In that study, well-being was measured by an asset index estimated using a factor analysis (FA) of various household socioeconomic indicators. Booysen et al (2008) Jansen et al (2015) analysed poverty across various objective and subjective methods and found a variation in poverty status, with blacks being mostly likely to be poor in at least one method.…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

The threshold effects of household indebtedness on multidimensional poverty

Ntsalaze

Ikhide

2017

IJSE

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DeclarationBy submitting this dissertation electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained therein is my own, original work, that I am the sole author thereof (save to the extent explicitly otherwise stated), that reproduction and publication thereof by Stellenbosch University will not infringe any third party rights and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it for obtaining any qualification.This dissertation includes two published and one accepted but not yet published original papers in peer-reviewed international journals. The fourth paper representing chapter eight is ready for submission for peer review. The development and writing of the papers (published and unpublished) were the principal responsibility of myself and, for each of the cases where this is not the case, a declaration is included in the dissertation indicating the nature and extent of the contributions of co-authors. AbstractGlobal household indebtedness has reached unprecedented levels over the past few decades.The household sector has had to cope with significant losses in income and wealth as well as the burden of debt service since the beginning of the financial crisis. Research focus on this phenomenon, together with its social implications, has grown. This study uses the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) data to empirically investigate the effects of household debt on multidimensional poverty. This was achieved through four independent research papers meant to address different angles of the subject. Chapter 5 provides a snapshot of the prevalence of over-indebtedness, using various international indicators and the National Credit Regulator (NCR) indicator, and describes which households are over-indebted. A total of eight percent of South African households are overindebted, and 61.4 percent of those households are found in the lowest income category (R0 -R2 000), spending more than 45 percent of their household income on debt repayments, which is beyond levels that are considered sustainable. The alarming revelation is that, according to the unsecured debt indicator, 15.2 percent of households are over-indebted, while 11 percent of households are driven below the relative income poverty line after making debt repayments. Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za 3The racial distribution indicates that households headed by Africans are overrepresented (79%).Most over-indebted households are found amongst those who own their places of residence (78.6%), do not receive government grants (71.7%), are male (53.8%), and have an unemployed household head (53.5%).Chapter 6 examines the presence of thresholds in the debt-poverty nexus at micro level, i.e. the tipping point above which debt is associated with more multidimensional poverty. By applying the Generalised Additive Model (GAM) using regression splines, the study finds the existence of critical tipping points between household debt service-to-income ratio and multidimensional poverty along with other explanatory variables (age...

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“…For example, in evaluating the relative wealth or poverty in developing counties, asset indices are often built to reflect the relative wealth in order to make crosscountry comparisons. For example, Booysen et al (2008) conducted a transregional survey in sub-Saharan Africa to evaluate the movement of poverty across regions over a particular time span. While "poverty" is a loosely defined term, this line of research commonly utilizes an asset index in order to evaluate the ability of citizens in each country to consume durable goods.…”

Section: Review Of Creating Indices Using Pcamentioning

confidence: 99%