Changes in South African well-being between 2008/9 and 2014/15: The evidence from expenditure and asset data

Motshidisi Nthatisi and Martin Wittenberg
Additional contact information
Motshidisi Nthatisi: Poverty and Inequality Statistics, Statistics South Africa

No 252, SALDRU Working Papers from Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town

Abstract: South Africa's Living Conditions Surveys (LCSs) are crucial instruments in monitoring the well-being of South Africa's population. Using expenditure as the yardstick for assessing well-being, the LCSs show a marked drop in poverty between 2008/09 and 2014/09. This would be a welcome trend. Unfortunately, the data collection method changed between these surveys so that there is at least some doubt as to whether the trend is real or due to measurement changes. Given that the expenditure modules are quite onerous for respondents this is an important question. In this paper we assess the reliability of the measured improvement of welfare by analysing also the information in the asset modules of these surveys. In comparison to the expenditure diaries the asset modules are much easier to complete and should therefore be much less prone to measurement error. We combine the information in the asset variables by constructing various asset indices and show that if these are used across the surveys they confirm that indeed average well-being has improved between 2008/09 and 2014/15.

Keywords: poverty measurement; asset indices (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-hap
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://opensaldru.uct.ac.za/handle/11090/967 Full text (application/pdf)

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:ldr:wpaper:252

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SALDRU Working Papers from Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alison Siljeur ().