The Use of Total Assets as a Proxy for Socioeconomic Status in Northern Vietnam

Recently, total assets have become a popular method to capture socioeconomic status (SES) for health research/intervention done in developing countries. Although, this method is suitable for areas in a rural setting, there are 2 major issues in applying this method: (a) which durable assets/infrastructure or housing characteristics truly reflect the family SES and (b) how to aggregate different variables to get a derived index of SES and produce a range of critical points differentiating socioeconomic levels. This study aims to validate the use of total asset as proxy for SES by addressing these issues. Results indicated that (a) variables reflecting family SES in rural setting area include variables capturing access to utilities and infrastructure, housing characteristics, and durable asset ownership; (b) principal component analysis is a suitable method to construct a derived index from multiple variables; and (c) the derived index is a valid indicator for SES in rural setting area.