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Abstract
Drawing data from four different integrated household surveys in rural areas of
Mali, Malawi, and two national surveys in Côte d’Ivoire, this paper tests the validity of
proxy measures of household wealth and income that can be readily implemented in
health surveys in rural Africa. The assumptions underlying the choice of wealth proxy are
described, and correlations with the true value are assessed in two different settings. The
expenditure proxy is developed and then tested for replicability in two independent data
sets representing the same population. The study found that in both Mali and Malawi, the
wealth proxy correlated highly (r $ 0.74) with the more complex monetary value method.
For rural areas of Côte d’Ivoire, it was possible to generate a list of just 10 expenditure
items, the values of which, when summed, correlated highly with expenditures on all
items combined (r = 0.74, development data set; r = 0.72, validation data set). Total
household expenditure is an accepted alternative measure of household wealth and
income in developing country settings. This paper thus shows that it can be feasible to
approximate both household wealth and expenditures in rural African settings without
dramatically lengthening questionnaires whose primary focus is on health.