Measuring material wealth in low‐income settings: A conceptual and how‐to guide

Abstract

Although wealth is consistently found to be an important predictor of health and well-being, there remains debate as to the best way to conceptualize and operationalize wealth. In this article, we focus on the measurement of economic resources, which is one among many forms of wealth. We provide an overview of the process of measuring material wealth, including theoretical and conceptual considerations, a how-to guide based on the most common approach to measurement, and a review of important theoretical and empirical questions that remain to be resolved. Throughout, we emphasize considerations particular to the settings in which anthropologists work, and we include variations on common approaches to measuring material wealth that might be better suited to anthropologists' theoretical questions, methodological approaches, and fieldwork settings.

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

“…Particularly in the last two decades there has been striking growth in the use of asset-based approaches relying on: (a) ownership of goods, such as televisions, bicycles, and telephones, (b) housing construction such as wall and floor type, (c) ownership of land, cattle, and other forms of capital, (d) and access to basic services, such as electricity and clean water [ 37 ]. These measures of material wealth are intended to capture the long-run economic capacity of households, and thus are conceptually distinct from other measures of socioeconomic status, such as education or occupational status [ 21 , 39 , 41 ].…”

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

“…This study further underscores the benefits of a more context-sensitive framework in this domain specifically (Cooper et al, 2012;Kaiser et al, 2017;Lazzarino et al, 2014), including the translation of human biological approaches to improve wellbeing of vulnerable populations (eg, Kohrt et al 2015).…”

“…Poverty is a major force shaping human biology. Better explanations of how and why poverty matters require consideration of what poverty means in context (Braveman et al, 2005;Cooper et al, 2012;Galobardes, Shaw, Lawlor, Lynch, & Smith, 2006;Howe et al, 2009;Hruschka et al, 2017;Kaiser et al, 2017). In this analysis, we considered how agricultural forms of household wealth might matter differently for mental health in comparison to cash economy ones.…”

“…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). Other often applied proxy measures are related to consumption or current or predicted participation in the cash economy, like occupation or education (McDade et al, 2019).…”

Exploring unobserved household living conditions in multilevel choice modeling: An application to contraceptive adoption by Indian women

“…In most theoretical frameworks, the socioeconomic dimension needs to be controlled as a covariate and methods are therefore required to estimate the economic resources available to individuals and households. These resources can be divided into material wealth and intangible resources such as education and skills [ 1 ]. Income and consumption data are the most popular measures of material wealth or standards of living [ 2 ].…”