Social Indicators Research
Volume 133, Issue 3, 2017, Pages 1047-1073

Assessing Changes in Household Socioeconomic Status in Rural South Africa, 2001–2013: A Distributional Analysis Using Household Asset Indicators (Article) (Open Access)

Kabudula C.W.* , Houle B. , Collinson M.A. , Kahn K. , Tollman S. , Clark S.
  • a MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt), School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, Department of Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom
  • b MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt), School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, School of Demography, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States
  • c MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt), School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, INDEPTH Network, Accra, Ghana, Umeå Centre for Global Health Research, Division of Epidemiology and Global Health, Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden
  • d MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt), School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, INDEPTH Network, Accra, Ghana, Umeå Centre for Global Health Research, Division of Epidemiology and Global Health, Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden
  • e MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt), School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, INDEPTH Network, Accra, Ghana, Umeå Centre for Global Health Research, Division of Epidemiology and Global Health, Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden
  • f MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt), School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, INDEPTH Network, Accra, Ghana, Department of Sociology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States

Abstract

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. © 2016, The Author(s).

Author Keywords

Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) South Africa Principal component analysis Multiple correspondence analysis Socioeconomic status (SES) Absolute index Household assets Agincourt Relative distribution methods

Index Keywords

correspondence analysis rural population socioeconomic status principal component analysis refugee ethnicity socioeconomic indicator South Africa household income

Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84976415452&doi=10.1007%2fs11205-016-1397-z&partnerID=40&md5=cfb73465fdbd3632d7ae3cb84abdae07

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-016-1397-z
ISSN: 03038300
Cited by: 14
Original Language: English