Household: A Boundary without Borders: A Critical Review of Household’s Validity asa Unit of Measurement in HIES Surveys, A Case of Botswana

Households have been used as units of data collection and analysis for a long time. This isbecause households are readily available and identifiable during data collection thanindividuals even when individuals are targeted for interview. This is the case in all populationsurveys and Household income and expenditure survey (HIES) is no exception. At theanalysis stage, households are used as units of analysis without due consideration to theelements that make up a household, even where the households are only separated by spacebut are not independent of each other. This is the case in Botswana. Since Botswana has one of the unique residential arrangements where mostfamilies/households have at least three residences treating the different residences as separate\ud households may pose a validity problems because they are treated as separate householdswhen they in fact belong to the same income bucket. This implies that some residences maybe classified as having no income when in fact they should have been classified otherwise.Others are classified as being above the poverty datum line when the opposite is true. It couldnot be said that the undercount and the over count can cancel each other unless there is anindication that they have the same magnitude. It is important for the purposes of HIES toidentify all the necessary links that make up a consumption unit before poverty datum line forhouseholds could be calculated