We consider an asset-based alternative to the standard use of expenditures in defining well-being and poverty. Our motivation is to see if there exist simpler and less demanding ways to collect data to measure economic welfare and rank households. This is particularly important in poor regions where there is limited capacity to collect consumption, expenditure and price data. We evaluate an index derived from a factor analysis on household assets using multipurpose surveys from several countries. We find that the asset index is a valid predictor of a crucial manifestation of poverty-child health and nutrition. Indicators of relative measurement error show that the asset index is measured as a proxy for long-term wealth with less error than expenditures. Analysts may thus prefer to use the asset index as an explanatory variable or as a means of mapping economic welfare to other living standards and capabilities such as health and nutrition. Copyright 2003 Blackwell Publishing Ltd..

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We investigate how to make poverty comparisons using multidimensional indicators of well-being, showing

This study explores global inequality in health status, and decomposes it into within-and between-country inequality. We rely on standardized height indicators as our health indicator since they avoid the measurement pitfalls of more traditional measures of health such as morbidity, mortality and life expectancy. They also avoid measurement problems associated with using incomes across time or place to compare welfare. Our calculation of world height inequality indicates that in contrast with similar research on income inequality, within-country variation is the source of most inequality, rather than the differences between countries.