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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | How Low Can You Go? Combining Census and Survey Data for Mapping Poverty in South Africa |
Authors: | Alderman, Harold Babita, Miriam Demombynes, Gabriel Makhatha, Nthabiseng Ozler, Berk |
Year: | 2002 |
Periodical: | Journal of African Economies |
Volume: | 11 |
Issue: | 2 |
Period: | June |
Pages: | 169-200 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | demography poverty Economics and Trade Miscellaneous (i.e. Demography, Refugees, Sports) |
External link: | https://jae.oxfordjournals.org/content/11/2/169.full.pdf |
Abstract: | Poverty maps, spatial descriptions of the distribution of poverty in any given country, are most useful to policymakers and researchers when they represent small geographic units, such as cities, towns or villages. Unfortunately, almost all household surveys are too small to be representative at such levels of disaggregation, and most census data do not contain the required information to calculate poverty. The 1996 South African census is an exception, in that it does contain income information for each individual in the household. This paper shows that the income from the census data provides only a weak proxy for the average income or poverty rates at either the provincial level or at lower levels of aggregation. It also demonstrates a simple method of imputing expenditures for every household in the census, using information in the October Household Survey (OHS) and the Income Expenditure Survey (IES) in 1995. The resulting predicted household consumption values are plausible and provide a good fit with the IES data. The paper also provides an example which demonstrates that poverty headcount can be imputed with fair precision for magisterial districts and for transitional local councils. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |