Abstract
ObjectiveTo estimate the absolute wealth of households using data from demographic and health surveys.MethodsWe developed a new metric, the absolute wealth estimate, based on the rank of each surveyed household according to its material assets and the assumed shape of the distribution of wealth among surveyed households. Using data from 156 demographic and health surveys in 66 countries, we calculated absolute wealth estimates for households. We validated the method by comparing the proportion of households defined as poor using our estimates with published World Bank poverty headcounts. We also compared the accuracy of absolute versus relative wealth estimates for the prediction of anthropometric measures.FindingsThe median absolute wealth estimates of 1 403 186 households were 2056 international dollars per capita (interquartile range: 723–6103). The proportion of poor households based on absolute wealth estimates were strongly correlated with World Bank estimates of populations living on less than 2.00 United States dollars per capita per day (R2 = 0.84). Absolute wealth estimates were better predictors of anthropometric measures than relative wealth indexes.ConclusionAbsolute wealth estimates provide new opportunities for comparative research to assess the effects of economic resources on health and human capital, as well as the long-term health consequences of economic change and inequality.
Highlights
The estimation of the economic status of individuals and their households is central to much work in epidemiology and the social sciences
We identified the poverty threshold for absolute wealth estimates and the value of γ that produced poverty headcounts that were closest to the corresponding World Bank poverty headcounts
The value of γ that gave the best fit between the poverty headcounts based on the absolute wealth estimates and the World Bank poverty headcounts was 0.32
Summary
The estimation of the economic status of individuals and their households is central to much work in epidemiology and the social sciences. Wealth is a key determinant of health and social achievement and an indicator of well-being in its own right For this reason, the development and testing of novel measures of economic status is of interest. Methods of estimating relative wealth cannot be used to assess the effect of absolute economic resources on health behaviours and outcomes across countries and years. Estimates of absolute household wealth could be used to make meaningful comparisons across countries and years They could be used to compare wealth effects aggregated at multiple social scales – e.g. at country, province, city or household level – and to contribute to current debates about the importance of absolute and relative wealth in determining health outcomes.[5,12]
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