ABSTRACT
This appendix briefly describes how the panel defined urban poverty for the pur poses of its DHS analyses, leaving a more complete account to Hewett and Mont gomery (2001). Recall that in the DHS program, no information is collected on incomes or consumption expenditures, the two variables commonly used to mea sure household standards of living. However, a few other items are collected that can serve as crude proxy measures of living standards. We can distinguish three categories of such items: the ownership of various consumer durables; descrip tors of the quality of housing; and measures of access to services, such as water supply and electricity. Of the three, we limit attention to the consumer durables and housing measures. This is because we want to explore whether poverty is associated with a lack of access to public services, and with that goal in mind, poverty cannot be defined in terms of these same services. The items used in the panel’s index are ownership of a refrigerator, television, radio, bicycle, motorcy cle, or car; the number of sleeping rooms in the dwelling; and whether its floor is of a finished material. Montgomery, Gragnolati, Burke, and Paredes (2000) and Filmer and Pritchett (2001) discuss the performance of such proxies as measures of living standards.
