Welcome to The DHS Program video on De Jure
and De Facto.
Before talking about De Jure and De Facto
it is important to understand the DHS definition
of a household.
In technical terms a household is a person
or group of related or unrelated persons who
live together in the same dwelling unit(s),
who acknowledge one adult male or female as
the head of the household, who share the same
housekeeping arrangements, and who are considered
a single unit.
In other words:
Do the people reside in the same compound?
Are they answerable to the same household
head?
Do they have the same cooking arrangement?
If the answer to any of these criteria or
a yes then that group of people are identified
as a household
Two terms that are frequently used when classifying
members of a household are the terms de jure
and de facto.
You will frequently see the terms de jure
and de facto throughout the DHS report, so
let’s examine these words more closely.
De Jure is the Latin term for “in law”
whereas De Facto is the Latin term for “in
fact” or “in practice”
So what do these words mean in DHS reports?
For DHS reports de jure residents are all
persons who are usual residents of the selected
households, whether or not they stayed in
the household the night before the interview.
While the term de facto means all persons
who stayed in the selected households the
night before the interview (whether usual
residents or visitors).
Let’s look at the household survey questionnaire.
When an interviewer comes to a household they
will ask to speak to the head of the household.
After proper consent is given, the interviewer
will start to fill in the household schedule.
The first question of the household schedule
is to ask the household head to “Please
give me the names of the persons who usually
live in your household and guests of the household
who stayed here last night starting with the
head of the household”
The names of persons who usually live in the
household are those that are considered de
jure household members.
If the person stayed there the previous night
they are considered de facto household members.
Most people in a DHS survey are usual residents
that stayed there last night (both de jure
and de facto).
However, there is a smaller subset of people
who are visitors (de facto but non de jure).
Additionally, there may be household members
that are away such as those visiting relatives
in another town (de jure but non de facto).
However, if a person is non de jure and non
de facto, meaning that they are not a usual
resident and did not stay the previous night
in the household, they are not eligible to
be interviewed as part of the DHS survey.
These two classifications of household members
are important because some indicators are
only calculated for de jure or de facto residents.
For example many tables about insecticide
treated net are limited to de facto sub-populations….or
those who stayed in the household the night
before the interview
For example in the Model Dataset table on
Use of Mosquito Nets by persons in the household
it says at the beginning that this table is
“the percentage of the de facto population
who slept the night before the survey under
a mosquito net (treated or untreated).”
However, for some tables it doesn’t tell
you explicitly that you are looking at de
facto populations but you can tell that it
is a limited to de facto household members
because the table is limited to those who
stayed in the household the night before the
interview.
For example in the model dataset table on
use of mosquito nets by children we know this
table is limited to de facto children because
of the note at the bottom that says “Table
is based on children who stayed in the household
the night before the interview”
Some tables are limited to only the de jure
population.
For example, in the model dataset table on
birth registration of children under age 5
the table is limited to only de jure children.
This means that the table is only showing
registered births by children who are usual
residents.
If you are working with DHS datafiles and
you want to restrict your analysis to only
de jure or defacto populations you will need
to use the following variables.
The variable for de jure is hv102.
In the dataset it is labelled “usual resident.
The variable for de facto is hv103.
The variable label for de facto is “slept
last night”
This video provided a brief overview of de
jure and de facto.
If you have any additional questions please
visit our website or the DHS User Forum
