Measuring Economic Welfare

This course will introduce students, researchers, and officials in state agencies to the key concepts in measuring income, expenditure, poverty and inequality. There will also be a strong practical component where participants will 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 will be expected to have already acquired basic Stata skills, for example through completing the January SALDRU Stata course or an undergraduate course in econometrics in which Stata was used. Don't know Stata? Have a look at our Introduction to Stata course.

Dates: 4 - 8 September 2023

Mode of Delivery: This course will be delivered online.

Course Instructors: Muna Shifa, Senior Research Officer, SALDRU and Martin Wittenberg, Professor in the School of Economics and Director of DataFirst.

Course Fees: R10 500.00. Partial scholarships are available to bona fide students and academics.

Closing date: Register for the course.

This is a joint SALDRU and DataFirst course. We reserve the right to postpone or cancel this course due to lack of demand

Participant comments

"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, StatsSA)

"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. The quality of teaching was superb. I think that this course was well executed and I wouldn't change anything." (Rejoice Mabhena, Masters student UKZN)