This study sets out to estimate the determinants of household economic wellbeing
and to evaluate the relative contributions of regressed-income sources in explaining
measured inequality. In particular, a regression-based decomposition approach
informed by the Shapley value, the instrumental variables econometric method,
and the 2007 Cameroon household consumption survey, was used. This approach
provides a flexible way to accommodate variables in a multivariate context. The
results indicate that the household stock of education, age, credit, being bilingual,
radio and electricity influence wellbeing positively, while rural, land and dependency
had a negative impact on wellbeing. Results also show that rural, credit, bilingualism,
education, age, dependency and land, in that order, are the main contributors to
measured income inequality, meanwhile, the constant term, media and electricity
are inequality reducing. These findings have policy implications for the ongoing drive
to scale down both inequality and poverty in Cameroon.
