The 1995/1996 Household Income, Expenditure - (PDF, 101 mb ...

11.5
persons. In the work status classification, the inferred labor force size
(="Employed" + "Unemployed") is 31% of those aged from 6 to 64 years.
However, the work status definition may not have been strictly adhered to in
enumeration, given that a larger percent (33.7%) said they "earned income."
Regarding income earners, an interesting thing is common sources: real estate
income is nearly as common as wages and salaries as an income source; the
other income sources are secondary.
The respondent in the HIECS is the interviewee, the enumerator's main
contact at the time of the interview (so there are more respondents than
households). The typical respondent in the 1995/1996 HIECS is female (72%) in
her late 30's or early 40's, and married (79%). 52.8% of respondents are
spouses of household heads, 40.8% are household heads. These characteristics
are significant in multivariate analysis, especially considering (see below) that
females make up less than 30% of income earners. A respondent will respond
a certain way given his or her specific demographic characteristics, and these
may not produce the "true" response for an item. For instance, in reponse to
how much monthly rent the household dwelling could command in the current
market, the full sample of female respondents produces an average figure of
73.57 £E. When male respondents are asked the same question, their estimates
produce an average of 68.78 £E, almost 5 £E less. It is interesting that males
would produce a more conservative estimate when imputing the value of their
dwelling, and it is noteworthy that the smaller mean is based on fewer cases.
These cognitive factors do, indeed, color income and expenditure estimates in
very complex ways.
n.c Population and Age
Figure 11.1 is the population pyramid for the 1995/1996 HIECS sample.
The HIECS has 39.29% of sampled individuals in the age group less than 15,
57.32% are between 15-64, and 3.39% are 66+ years old. The implied 95/96
HIECS "dependency ratio" (the number of "dependents" as a proportion of
"non-dependents" - in the simple case, the end ages divided by the middle) is
nearly 75%.
Age distributions are often biased and the HIECS pyramid is no
exception. Respondents 'are often unsure about ages, and it is a well known
phenomenon that individuals tend to prefer certain digits, ending in 0 or 5
perhaps, when pressed to provide an answer. If this digit preference exists
in the data, these digits will make up a disproportionate part of numeric
intervals, and the measure can be made into an index for comparison between
groups. The index should center at 1.0 in the absence of digit preference,
assuming a generally smooth population distribution. For example, in the
interval 18-22, the digit "20" should occur in one-fifth of the cases, and the
index for the number 20 should then be the number of times "20" occurs
divided by one-fifth of the total cases in the interval 18-22. Following are
the indices for digit preferences 0 and 5 for males and females from actual
IDEeS data: