Self-assessed well-being: Analysis of the NIDS Wave 1 and 2 Datasets

Most nationally representative household surveys in South Africa collect data on money-metric measures of well-being (income and expenditure), which are then used to generate statistics on poverty and inequality. However, these measures may be limited in several ways. First, they typically are not able to identify differences in economic well-being within the household when all resources in the household are not equally shared. Second, income received or spent captures only one aspect of economic status specifically and of well-being more generally, and a wide range of other factors will also affect an individual's quality of life