This course introduces students, researchers, and officials in state agencies to the key concepts in measuring income, expenditure, poverty and inequality. There is a strong practical component where participants use survey data to undertake welfare measurement and analysis.
Course outline:
- Introduction to the measurement of income and expenditure
- Measuring poverty and poverty lines
- Practical issues in measuring poverty
- Measuring inequality
- Practical issues in measuring inequality
- Asset indices as alternative measures of well-being
- Practical issues in creating and using asset indices
Prerequisites: Participants must have basic Stata skills, for example through completing the UCT Summer Training Programme in Social Science Research using Survey Data, or an undergraduate course in econometrics in which Stata was used.
More information: Please contact Alison Siljeur for information on the next course.
What participants are saying
The course was excellent. While the pace is quite fast, mainly because a lot of material is compressed into two weeks, I found that it was delivered in a manner that made it easy for me to grasp the concepts. This is mainly a reflection of the high quality of teaching. Since I come from the Poverty and Inequality division of StatsSA, I will definitely use the material covered in the course. Actually, I recommend it for everyone in the division.
– Sandile Simelane, Statistics South Africa
I found the course very interesting and I have acquired new data analysis skills. The lectures were well structured and the content was detailed. I am interested in pursuing a PhD related to labour economics and poverty reduction and, as a result, the entire course was very useful. Of special mention was the lecture on asset indices as well as other non-money metric measures of well-being. Tthe quality of teaching was superb. I think that this course was well executed and I wouldn’t change anything.
– Rejoice Mabhena, Master’s student at the University of KwaZulu-Natal