The Wealth Index In Yemen

Abstract

#This study aims to establish a Wealth Index and to compare the Wealth Index between areas and governorates. The sample size is 14077 households which has been taken from the HBS 2005-2006. The distribution of the Wealth Index of the Yemeni HBS 2005-2006 households has approximately normal distribution. Since Yemen has not a wealth index, For rural areas, the distribution of the Wealth Index is quite skewed to right, indicating that many households were concentrated on the lower end of the distribution and considered poor. The mean value of the Wealth Index for urban households is 1.21 times than the rural households, indicating that the urban households are 1.21 times wealthier. 12.7% of the HBS households considered poor and 25.8% wealthy. 89.9% of the rural households are poor whereas 90.2% of the urban are rich. The Wealth Index distributions for Aden, Sana'a City and Hadramout governorates, reveal that the households are wealthier than others. There are 23.2% of households in Sana'a City, 10.7% of households in Hadramout and 8.5% of households in Aden. Also 18.7% of households in Al-hodeida, 13.1% of households in Hajja, 8.3% of households in Dhamar, 8.0% of households in Ibb, and 7.2% of households in Taiz governorates which were considered poorest. In Shabwah Governorate, 54% of urban and 46% of rural households were considered poorest(the Poorest Quintile)