Critical analysis of Modimolle local municipality labour-intensive projects (2002-2007)
II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS IV TABLE OF CONTENTS V LIST OF FIGURES XIII LIST OF TABLES XIV ABBREVIATIONS, ACRONYMS AND GLOSSARY XV CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 BACKGROUND AND STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM 1 1.2 LABOUR–INTENSIVE CONSTRUCTION 2 1.3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY AND METHODOLOGY 3 1.3.1 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 3
Botswana: A description of the district roads labour‐intensive improvement and maintenance programme
Two major themes of Botswana's Fifth and Sixth Development Plans (1976‐1991) have been the creation of employment and rural development As one means of fulfilling both objectives, the Government of Botswana explicitly decided that labour‐intensive methods should be used by District Councils to improve and maintain the 13 000 kilometres of non‐gazetted roads for which they were responsible. To this end, between 1980 and 1982. a pilot project was carried out to examine the potential of labour‐intensive methods. In 1982. following its evaluation of the pilot project, the Ministry of Local Government and Lands decided that the methods developed during the pilot project should be replicated throughout Botswana. As a result District Council roads units have been established in all nine districts of Botswana. Over two thousand kilometres of road have been constructed and maintained; over 3 000 people are employed. This paper provides descriptions of (i) the organisational structure, (ii) the Junctions carried ou...
On the validity of area-based income measures to proxy household income
BackgroundThis paper assesses the agreement between household-level income data and an area-based income measure, and whether or not discrepancies create meaningful differences when applied in regression equations estimating total household prescription drug expenditures.MethodsUsing administrative data files for the population of BC, Canada, we calculate income deciles from both area-based census data and Canada Revenue Agency validated household-level data. These deciles are then compared for misclassification. Spearman's correlation, kappa coefficients and weighted kappa coefficients are all calculated. We then assess the validity of using the area-based income measure as a proxy for household income in regression equations explaining socio-economic inequalities in total prescription drug expenditures.ResultsThe variability between household-level income and area-based income is large. Only 37% of households are classified by area-based measures to be within one decile of the classification based on household-level incomes. Statistical evidence of the disagreement between income measures also indicates substantial misclassification, with Spearman's correlations, kappa coefficients and weighted kappa coefficients all indicating little agreement. The regression results show that the size of the coefficients changes considerably when area-based measures are used instead of household-level measures, and that use of area-based measures smooths out important variation across the income distribution.ConclusionThese results suggest that, in some contexts, the choice of area-based versus household-level income can drive conclusions in an important way. Access to reliable household-level income/socio-economic data such as the tax-validated data used in this study would unambiguously improve health research and therefore the evidence on which health and social policy would ideally rest.