Index of material household standard

This index was used in the Student Survey and is intended to measure the material well-being of the household, as a proxy for social status. The index has two main elements: crowding and the presence of various utilities. Crowding is measured as the number of rooms minus the number of persons living in the household.

The utilities included are listed below. The employment of a maid is counted as a 'utility' because it is similar to the utilities as an indicator of material well-being. The figures indicate the prevalence of each utility.

  1. Plaster inside the walls (95 %)
  2. Plaster outside the walls (67 %)
  3. Bathroom (91 %)
  4. Washing machine (22 %)
  5. Television (89 %)
  6. Video (63 %)
  7. Refrigerator (82 %)
  8. Car (31 %)
  9. Maid (live-in or daytime) (24 %)

Mathematically, the index can be expressed as MHS= (R - R*)/SDR + 2((U - U*)/SDU) The values produced by this equation were then rescaled to give 0 as the minimum and 10 as the maximum value. In the equation, R is the number of rooms minus the number of persons in the household and U is the proportion of a set of utilities present in the household. R* and U* are mean values and SDR and SDU are standard deviations. The purpose of subtracting the average and dividing by the standard deviation is to create a common scale for U and R, through so-called linear transformation. The variable U is given twice the weight of R because it presumably tells us more about the household's situation and is less prone to random variations. The crowding variable is also important, but not always related to the well-being of the household in a straight-forward way. For instance, child fostering is a common practice in Cape Verdean society which tends to increase the number of residents in wealthier households, thereby offsetting part of the negative relationship between wealth and crowding. Nevertheless, the fact that U and R are correlated with eachother (with a coefficient of 0.6) indicate that both can be taken as indicators of the same theoretical concept, i.e. the material well-being of the household.

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