The Democratic Republic of the Congo EquityTool country factsheet and file downloads on this page are licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
EquityTool: Released December 9, 2015
Source data: Congo Democratic Republic DHS 2013-14
# of survey questions in original wealth index: 43
# of variables in original index: 109
# of survey questions in EquityTool: 10
# of variables in EquityTool: 13
Questions:
Question | Option 1 | Option 2 | Option 3 | |
Q1 | Does this household have: electricity? | Yes | No | |
Q2 | … a radio ? | Yes | No | |
Q3 | … a television ? | Yes | No | |
Q4 | Does any member of this household own: a watch? | Yes | No | |
Q5 | …a mobile phone? | Yes | No | |
Q6 | What is the main source of drinking water for members of your household? | Unprotected spring | Other | |
Q7 | What is the primary material used in the construction of the exterior walls of your dwelling? | Cement block | Other | |
Q8 | What is the primary material of the floor of your dwelling? | Cement | Earth/Sand/Dung | Other |
Q9 | What type of fuel does your household primarily use for cooking? | Charcoal | Wood | Other |
Q10 | What is the primary material of the roof of your dwelling? | Metal | Thatch/Palm/Leaves | Other |
Technical notes:
The standard simplification process was applied to achieve high agreement with the original wealth index. Kappa was greater than 0.75 for the national and urban indices. Details on the standard process can be found in this article. The data used to identify important variables comes from the factor weights released by ICF.
Level of agreement:
Respondents in the original dataset were divided into 3 groups – those in the 1st and 2nd quintiles (poorest 40%), those in the 3rd quintile, and those in the 4th and 5th quintiles (richest 40%). After calculating their wealth using the simplified index, they were again divided into 3 groups. Agreement between the original data and our simplified index is presented below.
National Population (n=96214) | Urban only population (n=32938) | |
% agreement | 84.6% | 89.6% |
Kappa statistic | 0.760 | 0.837 |
What does this mean?
When shortening and simplifying the index to make it easier for programs to use to assess equity, it no longer matches the original index with 100% accuracy. At an aggregate level, this error is minimal, and this methodology was deemed acceptable for programmatic use by an expert panel. However, for any given individual, especially those already at a boundary between two quintiles, the quintile the EquityTool assigns them to may differ to their quintile according to the original DHS wealth index.
The graph below illustrates the difference between the EquityTool generated index and the full DHS wealth index. Among all of the people (20% of the population) originally identified as being in the poorest quintile, approximately 58% are still identified as being in the poorest quintile when we use the simplified index. However, approximately 38% of people are now classified as being in Quintile 2. From a practical standpoint, all of these people are relatively poor. Yet, it is worthwhile to understand that the simplified index of 10 questions produces results that are not identical to using all 43 questions in the original survey.
The following table provides the same information on the movement between national quintiles when using the EquityTool versus the original DHS wealth index:
EquityTool National Quintiles | |||||||
Quintile 1 | Quintile 2 | Quintile 3 | Quintile 4 | Quintile 5 | Total | ||
Original DHS National Quintiles | Quintile 1 | 11.5% | 7.6% | 0.9% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 20% |
Quintile 2 | 6.2% | 9.2% | 4.5% | 0.1% | 0.0% | 20% | |
Quintile 3 | 1.2% | 3.4% | 12.8% | 2.6% | 0.0% | 20% | |
Quintile 4 | 0.0% | 0.1% | 2.6% | 16.3% | 0.9% | 20% | |
Quintile 5 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.9% | 19.1% | 20% | |
Total | 19.0% | 20.2% | 20.8% | 20.0% | 20.0% | 100% |
The following graph provides information on the movement between urban quintiles when using the EquityTool versus the original DHS wealth index:
The following table provides the same information on the movement between urban quintiles when using the EquityTool versus the original DHS wealth index:
EquityTool Urban Quintiles | |||||||
Quintile 1 | Quintile 2 | Quintile 3 | Quintile 4 | Quintile 5 | Total | ||
Original DHS Urban Quintiles | Quintile 1 | 18.3% | 1.7% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 20% |
Quintile 2 | 1.7% | 15.9% | 2.4% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 20% | |
Quintile 3 | 0.0% | 2.4% | 14.9% | 2.7% | 0.1% | 20% | |
Quintile 4 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 2.5% | 10.6% | 6.8% | 20% | |
Quintile 5 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.4% | 5.5% | 14.2% | 20% | |
Total | 20.0% | 20.0% | 20.1% | 18.8% | 21.1% | 100% |
Data interpretation considerations:
Metrics for Management provides technical assistance services to those using the EquityTool, or wanting to collect data on the wealth of their program beneficiaries. Please contact equitytool@m4mgmt.org and we will assist you.
[1] From povertydata.worldbank.org, reporting Poverty headcount ratio at $1.90/day at 2011 international prices.
[2] From the Congo Democratic Republic: Standard DHS 2013-14 dataset household recode, available at http://dhsprogram.com/