EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

One Size Fits All? The Validity of a Composite Poverty Index Across Urban and Rural Households in South Africa

Janina Steinert, Lucie Dale Cluver (), G. J. Melendez-Torres () and Sebastian Vollmer
Additional contact information
Lucie Dale Cluver: University of Oxford
G. J. Melendez-Torres: University of Warwick

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2018, vol. 136, issue 1, No 4, 72 pages

Abstract: Abstract Composite indices have been prominently used in poverty research. However, validity of these indices remains subject to debate. This paper examines the validity of a common type of composite poverty indices using data from a cross-sectional survey of 2477 households in urban and rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Multiple-group comparisons in structural equation modelling were employed for testing differences in the measurement model across urban and rural groups. The analysis revealed substantial variations between urban and rural respondents both in the conceptualisation of poverty as well as in the weights and importance assigned to individual poverty indicators. The validity of a ‘one size fits all’ measurement model can therefore not be confirmed. In consequence, it becomes virtually impossible to determine a household’s poverty level relative to the full sample. Findings from our analysis have important practical implications in nuancing how we can sensitively use composite poverty indices to identify poor people.

Keywords: Asset indices; Multidimensional poverty; Poverty indices; Structural equation modelling; Validity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-016-1540-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:soinre:v:136:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1007_s11205-016-1540-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-016-1540-x

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2024-12-29
Handle: RePEc:spr:soinre:v:136:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1007_s11205-016-1540-x