Demographic and Health Survey 2009-10 - Timor-Leste Ministry of ...

Table 2.10 Household durable goods
Percentage of households and de jure population possessing various household effects, means of transportation,
agricultural land, and livestock/farm animals by residence, Timor-Leste 2009-10
Possession
Households Population
Urban Rural Total Urban Rural Total
Household effects
Radio 49.0 30.1 34.5 49.6 32.1 36.2
Television 60.4 10.9 22.5 62.1 12.1 23.9
Mobile telephone 73.5 29.8 40.1 75.6 33.3 43.3
Non-mobile telephone 1.5 0.3 0.6 1.8 0.4 0.7
Refrigerator
Means of transport
30.6 2.2 8.9 29.7 2.5 8.9
Bicycle 24.1 6.9 11.0 26.2 7.7 12.0
Animal drawn cart 15.2 7.6 9.4 16.9 8.4 10.4
Motorcycle/scooter 32.4 7.5 13.4 33.5 8.5 14.4
Car/truck 12.3 1.4 3.9 11.8 1.5 4.0
Boat with a motor 0.6 0.7 0.7 0.8 0.7 0.7
Ownership of agricultural land 42.7 91.6 80.1 45.4 92.0 81.0
Ownership of farm animals1 70.6 93.4 88.1 74.3 94.1 89.4
Number 2,695 8,768 11,463 15,852 51,134 66,985
1 Cattle, cows, bulls, horses, donkeys, goats, sheep, or chickens
Four in five households (80 percent) own agricultural land, and 88 percent have farm animals.
Table 2.10 shows that rural households are more than two times as likely to own agricultural land as
urban households (92 and 43 percent, respectively). Similarly, 93 percent of rural households own
farm animals, compared with only 71 percent of urban households.
2.6 WEALTH QUINTILES
The wealth quintile provides information on the economic status of households in a surveyed
country. Wealth quintiles provide a consistent measure of combined indicators of household income
and expenditures. The wealth quintile, as constructed, uses information on household ownership of
various consumer items, ranging from household assets like a television, means of transport like a
bicycle, and ownership of land and farm animals, to dwelling characteristics, such as source of
drinking water, sanitation facilities, and type of building materials used in the construction of houses.
Each asset is assigned a weight (factor score) generated through principal components
analysis, and the resulting asset scores are standardized in relation to a normal distribution with a
mean of zero and standard deviation of one. Each household is then assigned a score for each asset,
and the scores are summed for each household; individuals are ranked according to the total score of
the household in which they reside. The sample is then divided into quintiles from one (lowest) to five
(highest). A single asset index is developed for the whole sample; separate indices are not prepared
for the urban and rural populations.
The 2009-10 TLDHS provides an opportunity to examine the distribution of the population in
Timor-Leste by household economic status. Table 2.11 shows the percent distribution of the de jure
population by wealth quintiles, according to residence and districts. Fifty-eight percent of the urban
population is in the highest wealth quintile, compared with only 9 percent of the rural population. The
rural population is more likely to be in the lowest three lowest quintiles. Dili is by far the wealthiest
district in the country, with 71 percent of its population in the highest quintile. Nearly one in two
households in Oecussi is in the poorest wealth quintile, and more than three in five households in
Ainaro, Oecussi, and Viqueque are in the lowest two quintiles.
Household Population and Housing Characteristics | 27