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Home » Topics » Wealth Index » understanding hv270 & hv270a ( urban/rural wealth index Kenya 2022 DHS)
understanding hv270 & hv270a [message #28601] Sat, 03 February 2024 20:00 Go to next message
Rae is currently offline  Rae
Messages: 3
Registered: November 2023
Member
Could someone explain how to use the urban/rural wealth index? From the Standard Recode Manual for DHS 7 I understand the hv270a wealth index was created to provide an urban and rural specific wealth index. However, when I use "tab hv270a" in STATA there is no distinction for rural vs urban, yet the distribution across the wealth quintiles is different from the output for the tab command for the standard hv270. Likewise if I tab hv025 (place of residence) and hv270 the output is very different from tab hv025 and hv270a. Is there a manual that assists with interpreting these outputs?

Also, is the Standard Recode Manual for DHS 7 the most recent one? It is from 2018.

Thanks very much!
Re: understanding hv270 & hv270a [message #28620 is a reply to message #28601] Wed, 07 February 2024 12:51 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Janet-DHS is currently offline  Janet-DHS
Messages: 911
Registered: April 2022
Senior Member
Following is a response from DHS staff member, Tom Pullum:

To understand hv270a you have to go back to the continuous versions of the wealth index, hv271 and hv271a.  hv271a is constructed as two linear functions of hv271, one for urban households and one for rural households. You will see this if you regress hv271a on hv270, separately for hv025=1 and hv025=2. This is done such that the mean of hv271a is approximately the same for urban and rural households.

Then, just as hv270 is constructed from hv271 by converting to quintiles, hv270a is constructed from hv271a by converting to quintiles, but separately for urban households and rural households. You can find more in the Guide to DHS Statistics and here: https://dhsprogram.com/topics/wealth-index/index.cfm.

We are just finishing up some of the DHS documentation for DHS8.  The Standard Recode Manual should be out soon, but I can't say when.  Sorry for the delay, which goes back to the delay in DHS8 data collection because of covid.
Re: understanding hv270 & hv270a [message #28635 is a reply to message #28620] Sat, 10 February 2024 14:53 Go to previous message
Rae is currently offline  Rae
Messages: 3
Registered: November 2023
Member
Thanks so much--very helpful. To confirm, my understanding is that I would use hv270a in place of hv270 in my analysis, and there is no need to do any additional coding to use it. (Assuming that is correct, it is so useful! Thank you!)
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