Material wealth in 3D: Mapping multiple paths to prosperity in low- and middle- income countries

Abstract

Material wealth is a key factor shaping human development and well-being. Every year, hundreds of studies in social science and policy fields assess material wealth in low- and middle-income countries assuming that there is a single dimension by which households can move from poverty to prosperity. However, a one-dimensional model may miss important kinds of prosperity, particularly in countries where traditional subsistence-based livelihoods coexist with modern cash economies. Using multiple correspondence analysis to analyze representative household data from six countries—Nepal, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Guatemala—across three world regions, we identify a number of independent dimension of wealth, each with a clear link to locally relevant pathways to success in cash and agricultural economies. In all cases, the first dimension identified by this approach replicates standard one-dimensional estimates and captures success in cash economies. The novel dimensions we identify reflect success in different agricultural sectors and are independently associated with key benchmarks of food security and human growth, such as adult body mass index and child height. The multidimensional models of wealth we describe here provide new opportunities for examining the causes and consequences of wealth inequality that go beyond success in cash economies, for tracing the emergence of hybrid pathways to prosperity, and for assessing how these different pathways to economic success carry different health risks and social opportunities.

Agricultural wealth better predicts mental wellbeing than market wealth among highly vulnerable households in Haiti: Evidence for the benefits of a multidimensional approach to poverty

“…Our assessments of household wealth used a multidimensional approach (Hruschka et al, ; Kolenikov & Angeles, ). We included a wide range of household assets, household construction materials, access to basic services, and agricultural assets.…”

“…However, this uni-dimensional index really only captures household poverty through livelihoods associated with the cash economy (Filmer & Pritchett, 1999). Importantly, too, these cash-economic goods or services are more easily accessible in urban areas; thus, they often depict rural settings as largely poor or deprived (Bingenheimer, 2007;Howe, Hargreaves, Gabrysch, & Huttly, 2009;Hruschka et al, 2017).…”

“…Peri-urban and even urban households owning even just a few animals or small plots of cultivatable land can produce small but valuable amounts of consumable or sellable food (Ayenew, Wurzinger, Tegegne, & Zollitsch, 2011). For these reasons, agricultural assets could provide a straightforward buffer against nutrition-related disease at the very least (Ali, Bowen, Deininger, & Duponchel, 2016;Dangour et al, 2012;Ferguson, 1992;Hadley et al, 2019;Hruschka et al, 2017;Lawson et al, 2014;Little, Mcpeak, Barrett, & Kristjanson, 2008;Popkin, 2014).…”

“…In spite of the potential for agricultural assets to buffer health risks, few empirical studies have considered these alternative dimensions of wealth in assessing the relationship between poverty and wellbeing in low‐income countries (Hadley et al, ; Hruschka et al, ). Based on these multiple proposed mechanisms by which agricultural wealth might buffer vulnerabilities, we should also expect that greater household agricultural wealth could have a protective effect in relation to mental wellbeing (Weaver & Hadley, ).…”

“…Lack of material wealth is a fundamental stressor in humans, both in terms of lack of access to basic needs, but also because of the low power and stigmatized social meanings attached (eg, Weaver, Tadess, Stevenson, & Hadley, 2019;Wutich & Brewis, 2014). In studies that treat poverty as a driver of biocultural variation, "poverty" is most often operationalized as lack of wealth within the cash economy (Hruschka, Hadley, & Hackman, 2017;Mulligan, Dixon, Joanna Sinn, & Elliott, 2015). Direct measures often focus on assessment of income or purchased material assets like housing materials or vehicles (Decaro, Manyama, & Wilson, 2016;Kaiser, Hruschka, & Hadley, 2017).…”