captures the tendency for prices to be lower in rural than in urban areas, and in some of the northern provinces relative to the south. In addition, nominal food consumption was deflated by the seasonal food price indices.<sup>21</sup>

# **3.2 The Asset Index**

In order to facilitate comparisons with DHS data, the assets included in the index were chosen to mirror, as far as possible, the index constructed for the Mozambique DHS by Gwatkin and others (2000).<sup>22</sup> A list of variables, including their sample means and the scoring coefficients are reported in appendix Table A1. Due to differences in the IAF and DHS questionnaires, there is not a perfect overlap in the assets and household characteristics for the data available. In addition, there are some differences in the answer codes in the two surveys. As a consequence, it is not possible to compare the IAF-based asset directly with the asset index constructed for the DHS by Gwatkin and others. In order to facilitate comparison, an alternative asset index was constructed for the DHS data for a comparable set of variables on household assets and characteristics. As can be seen from the table, the means for the respective household variables are quite similar across the surveys. Moreover, with few exceptions, the factor loadings—the weights for the respective household assets and characteristics in the asset index—are broadly similar for the DHS and the IAF, suggesting a similar variance-covariance structure for the variables in the two surveys.

# **3.3 Health Service Outcomes**

Data are available for five key health service outcomes in the 1996/97 IAF: hospital visits, health facility visits, child immunizations, pregnancy controls, and medically supervised deliveries. In all cases, the variables are of a binary nature, simply reflecting whether an individual reports having used a particular service or not. Sample and subsample means are reported in Table 1 below.

The variables on hospital or health centre visits refer to a recall period of four weeks. Individuals were only asked about the use of curative care if they had reported an incidence of illness or injury during the recall period.<sup>23</sup> This suggests the use of selfreported illness as a criteria for need. However, similar to many other surveys in developing countries, richer households (as measured by consumption) are more likely to report having been ill in the last four weeks. This may be because richer households have a lower tolerance threshold for their definition of “ill” than do poorer households. Also, recall of illness episodes may be related to education and formal treatment episodes. Both 21 See Datt and others (2000) for details on the construction of consumption aggregates for the IAF.

22 The IAF contains a number of other variables on assets and household characteristics that could potentially be used to construct a more discriminating index, or to better predict household expenditure. However, the purpose of this exercise is to look at how the use of a simple asset index, including the type that can be constructed with DHS data, affects measured inequality relative to the use of consumption as a welfare measure. For this reason, more complex indices are not considered.

> 23 The questionnaire only permitted one care-seeking episode. If several consultations were made in the last month, answers refer to the last consultation.

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