Poverty in African Households: the Limits of Survey and Census Representations
研究了坦桑尼亚和布基纳法索的家庭定义如何影响贫困测量，提出“开放”与“封闭”家庭框架，指出调查数据难以准确反映灵活应对贫困的开放家庭。
African poverty statistics depend on household-level measurements from survey data, making the definition of household of critical importance. Detailed case studies from Tanzania and Burkina Faso explore (1) understandings of household membership and ambiguities, and (2) how well survey definitions capture households as economic units, and the implications for household size and responses to and mitigation of poverty. We develop an analytic framework of ‘open’ and ‘closed’ households. ‘Open’ households cope with poverty using flexibility, movement and extra-household networks, but are poorly represented by survey data. Closed households are likely to be better described by survey data.