Codes and Frequencies
Description
For all households with complete survey results, WEALTHQ refers to the relative wealth of the household where the woman lives, divided into quintiles from the poorest (Lowest quintile) to the richest (Highest quintile). Wealth is determined by a constructed wealth score (SCORE).
SCORE is a constructed variable that combines information on household assets, livestock owned, floor, roof, and wall construction materials, water sources, and toilet facilities to create a total wealth score for the household.
- Household assets include possessions such as radios, televisions, bicycles, furniture, etc. These options may vary slightly by country and survey year.
- Livestock counted are chickens, sheep, goats, horses/camels, cows/bulls, and local cattle. These options may vary slightly by country and survey year.
- Floor materials are divided into three categories: natural materials (e.g. earth or dung), rudimentary materials (e.g. planks or palm bamboo), and finished materials (e.g. vinyl, ceramic tiles, cement, or carpet). These options may vary slightly by country and survey year.
- Roof materials are divided into three categories: natural materials (e.g. a thatched roof or dung/mud), rudimentary materials (e.g. corrugated iron or tin cans), and finished materials (e.g. asbestos, concrete, or tiles). These options may vary slightly by country and survey year.
- Wall materials are divided into three categories: natural materials (e.g. no walls, cane, or dung/mud), rudimentary materials (e.g. bamboo and mud, plywood, cardboard, or reused wood), and finished materials (e.g. cement, bricks, or wood planks with shingles). These options may vary slightly by country and survey year.
- Water source includes options such as water piped into the dwelling, a public tap, a dug well, and others.
- Toilet facility includes options such as a piped sewer system, composting toilet, etc.
Unweighted means and standard deviations for each of the indicator variables are then used in a principal components analysis to determine the overall household wealth score.
The questions associated with this variable were included in the household questionnaire.
Comparability
The general meaning of WEALTHQ is consistent across samples, but the variables used to calculate the wealth index quintiles and the level of wealth implied by a specific quintile-ranking are country- and survey-specific. Thus, for example, a given set of household amenities and services could place a household in the top quintile in a low-resource country but in the middle quintile in a wealthier country. WEALTHQ should thus be interpreted as the relative economic standing of the woman's household within a specific country at a particular point in time.
For samples that are not nationally representative, such as Nigeria 2017 (Oyo region), wealth quintiles and tertiles are calculated relative to the sampled population, not the nation as a whole.
For Burkina Faso and Niger samples, the PMA team originally calculated wealth tertiles for households rather than wealth quintiles, due to small sample size and distribution of wealth among households in the sample. IPUMS has calculated the wealth quintiles for these samples using SCORE and HQWEIGHT, and keeping only one observation per household.
Universe
- Ethiopia 2019 Maternal and Newborn Health Cohort: All persons.
Availability
- Ethiopia: 2019
