The role of censuses, surveys and demographic surveillance systems in measuring health gaps between the rich and the poor in rural Africa.

Compared with Europe and North America, few African countries have consistently undertaken health and standard of living surveys that collect information ranging from socioeconomic status (SES) to self-reported morbidity. Because of the lack of these data, a detailed picture of the nature and magnitude of inequalities in health is lacking. Data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and censuses have shown considerable inequalities in mortality across socioeconomic groups as well as across ethnic and regional lines. However, to get a clearer picture of inequalities in health would require the combined use of cross-sectional and surveillance data on fatal and non-fatal health outcomes. This combination of data sources would also give researchers the leverage to examine the sources of inequality as well as explanations behind the observed inequalities.