HV270 The wealth index is a composite measure of a household's cumulative living standard.
The wealth index is calculated using easy-to-collect data on a household's ownership of
selected assets, such as televisions and bicycles; materials used for housing construction;
and types of water access and sanitation facilities.
Generated with a statistical procedure known as principal components analysis, the
wealth index places individual households on a continuous scale of relative wealth. DHS
separates all interviewed households into five wealth quintiles to compare the influence
of wealth on various population, health and nutrition indicators. The wealth index is
presented in the DHS Final Reports and survey datasets as a background characteristic
HV271 Wealth index factor score (5 decimals)