By ignoring intra-household inequality do we underestimate the extent of poverty?

Sylvie Lambert and Philippe De Vreyer

No DT/2017/05, Working Papers from DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Mondialisation)

Abstract: This paper uses a novel survey to re-examine inequality and poverty levels in Senegal. In order to account for intra-household inequalities, it uses consumption data collected at a relatively disaggregated level within households. This data reveal that mean consumption is higher than measured by standard consumption surveys and second, that consumption inequality in this country is also much higher that what is commonly thought, with a Gini index reaching 48. These findings affect global poverty estimates in opposite directions and in this context, nearly compensate each other. Intra-household consumption inequalities are shown to account for nearly 14% of total inequality in Senegal. These results are robust to the existence of plausible measurement errors. As a result of this intra-household inequality, “invisible poor” exist with 12.6% of the poor individuals living in non-poor households.

Keywords: Inequality; Poverty; Intrahousehold allocation; Senegal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 D63 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2017-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-hme
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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https://dial.ird.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/201 ... xtent-of-poverty.pdf Second version, 2018 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Inequality, poverty and the intra-household allocation of consumption in Senegal (2019)
Working Paper: Inequality, poverty and the intra-household allocation of consumption in Senegal (2019)
Working Paper: By ignoring intra-household inequality, do we underestimate the extent of poverty? (2018)
Working Paper: By ignoring intra-household inequality, do we underestimate the extent of poverty? (2018)
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