Determinants of household wealth in Uganda

Abstract

This study explores determinants of household wealth in Uganda: analysis of data from the Uganda demographic and health survey 2016, household file to find out whether 6 and level of education of the household health and the type of place of residence of the household influence household wealth in Uganda. To establish the relationship between socio-economic (highest level of education attained by the household head), demographic (type of place of residence and sex of the household head) characteristics and household wealth in Uganda, the will index was used as a composite measure of households. Independent variables used in this study include the following; sex of the household head, type of place of residence and highest education level attained of the household head whereas the dependent variable is household wealth. A cross-sectional design was adopted for this study representative sample of 19,588 in Uganda randomly selected for the 2016 UDHS. Collected details were analyzed using SPSS. Although this study indicated that all the factors were significant, female-headed households with found to be poorer than males. Higher education of the household head was associated with the household being poor. Households in rural areas had the highest proportion in the poorest wealth quantile (27.7%). Male-headed households were more likely to attain the highest wealth quantile than female-headed households. The households that were found to reside in urban areas were more likely to attain the highest wealth quantile as compared to those located in rural areas. Households that were headed by those with a higher level of education were highly likely to attain the highest wealth quantile as compared to those with no level of education. The study recommends the government to encourage people to save, household heads to persist in education to gain higher levels of education and to avail services that exist in urban areas in rural areas.