We consider an asset-based alternative to the standard use of expenditures in defining well-being and poverty. Our primary motivation is to see if there exist simpler and less demanding ways to collect and analyze data to measure economic welfare and rank households. This is particularly...

We use Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to compare "poverty" at two or more points in time within and between African countries. Our welfare measure is an index resulting from a factor analysis of various household characteristics, durables, and household heads' education. An advantage of...