A Measure of Household Infrastructure Based on Factor Analysis of Census Data with an Application to Bolivia - III: Change Over Time

Abstract

Two previous articles proposed and validated a continuous measure of the material standard of living as concerns basic household infrastructure (housing, water, energy and sanitation). The scale is based on Principal Component Analysis of a large number of variables derived from census questions, and was applied to the case of Bolivia using the 2001 Population Census. The Household Infrastructure Measure (HIM) is a linear combination of household factor scores for all factors extracted from a set of relevant census variables, weighted by each factor's contribution to accounting for variance in those variables. This paper explores change over time in the quality of household infrastructure as measured by the proposed scale. For this purpose several problems are addressed, including adaptations in the scale to manage differences in census questionnaires over time, and adoption of a common origin and unit of measurement for the measures computed at various dates. The findings are applied to the case of Bolivia, assessing change in the material standard of living of Bolivian households through the three latest population censuses (1976, 1992 and 2001), in relation to the main geographical divisions, major socioeconomic groups, and key population characteristics of the country. JEL codes: C43, C81, I31, I32