This report is an extension of the earlier analysis of the 2003/2004 Namibia
Household Income and Expenditure Survey and is particularly focused on the
anthropometric data (the height and weight of individuals), which has not been
analysed before. Specifically, the report computes the Body Mass Index (BMI)
and uses this index to conduct an analysis of deprivation and distribution of welfare
in Namibia, and to make comparisons with the expenditure-based measures
of poverty and inequality.
BMI is an estimate of body composition that correlates an individual’s weight
and height to lean body mass. The presumption underlying the use of BMI is that
outside the spurts of growth shortly after birth and during puberty, the weight of
healthy individuals increase with the square of height. This way, BMI is defined in
terms of kilograms per square meters. Throughout this report we treat BMI very
much in the same way as household expenditure is treated in conventional poverty
assessments, as a cardinal measure increasing with the level of welfare, and we
subject this measure to a series of standard approaches developed for distributive
analysis.