TY - JOUR
T1 - Assessing Changes in Household Socioeconomic Status in Rural South Africa, 2001–2013
T2 - A Distributional Analysis Using Household Asset Indicators
AU - Kabudula, Chodziwadziwa W.
AU - Houle, Brian
AU - Collinson, Mark A.
AU - Kahn, Kathleen
AU - Tollman, Stephen
AU - Clark, Samuel
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, The Author(s).
PY - 2017/9/1
Y1 - 2017/9/1
N2 - Understanding the distribution of socioeconomic status (SES) and its temporal dynamics within a population is critical to ensure that policies and interventions adequately and equitably contribute to the well-being and life chances of all individuals. This study assesses the dynamics of SES in a typical rural South African setting over the period 2001–2013 using data on household assets from the Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance System. Three SES indices, an absolute index, principal component analysis index and multiple correspondence analysis index, are constructed from the household asset indicators. Relative distribution methods are then applied to the indices to assess changes over time in the distribution of SES with special focus on location and shape shifts. Results show that the proportion of households that own assets associated with greater modern wealth has substantially increased over time. In addition, relative distributions in all three indices show that the median SES index value has shifted up and the distribution has become less polarized and is converging towards the middle. However, the convergence is larger from the upper tail than from the lower tail, which suggests that the improvement in SES has been slower for poorer households. The results also show persistent ethnic differences in SES with households of former Mozambican refugees being at a disadvantage. From a methodological perspective, the study findings demonstrate the comparability of the easy-to-compute absolute index to other SES indices constructed using more advanced statistical techniques in assessing household SES.
AB - Understanding the distribution of socioeconomic status (SES) and its temporal dynamics within a population is critical to ensure that policies and interventions adequately and equitably contribute to the well-being and life chances of all individuals. This study assesses the dynamics of SES in a typical rural South African setting over the period 2001–2013 using data on household assets from the Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance System. Three SES indices, an absolute index, principal component analysis index and multiple correspondence analysis index, are constructed from the household asset indicators. Relative distribution methods are then applied to the indices to assess changes over time in the distribution of SES with special focus on location and shape shifts. Results show that the proportion of households that own assets associated with greater modern wealth has substantially increased over time. In addition, relative distributions in all three indices show that the median SES index value has shifted up and the distribution has become less polarized and is converging towards the middle. However, the convergence is larger from the upper tail than from the lower tail, which suggests that the improvement in SES has been slower for poorer households. The results also show persistent ethnic differences in SES with households of former Mozambican refugees being at a disadvantage. From a methodological perspective, the study findings demonstrate the comparability of the easy-to-compute absolute index to other SES indices constructed using more advanced statistical techniques in assessing household SES.
KW - Absolute index
KW - Agincourt
KW - Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS)
KW - Household assets
KW - Multiple correspondence analysis
KW - Principal component analysis
KW - Relative distribution methods
KW - Socioeconomic status (SES)
KW - South Africa
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84976415452&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11205-016-1397-z
DO - 10.1007/s11205-016-1397-z
M3 - Article
SN - 0303-8300
VL - 133
SP - 1047
EP - 1073
JO - Social Indicators Research
JF - Social Indicators Research
IS - 3
ER -