Transient and Chronic Rural Household Poverty: Evidence from Kenya

Milu Muyanga, Miltone Ayieko and Mary Bundi

Working Papers PMMA from PEP-PMMA

Abstract: Most of the earlier studies of poverty in Kenya have basically been static in nature. They have attempted to measure household welfare -- incidence, gap and severity -- at a point in time. Such studies are undeniably vital. However, they do not necessarily provide a good indication of welfare stability over time. This study makes an empirical contribution to poverty analysis in Kenya by incorporating poverty dynamics dimension. We first examine poverty dynamics using economic transition matrices. Next, we decompose total poverty into transient and chronic poverty components using transient poverty as censored fluctuation and equally-distributed equivalent poverty gaps approaches for comparison. The latter approach introduces inequality into poverty decomposition. Finally, we establish important correlates of poverty components using quantile-censored and non-parametric regressions. Given the high rural household poverty incidences and the country's limited resources, this study has critical implications for economic policy in Kenya.

Keywords: Poverty dynamics; chronic poverty; transient poverty; transition matrices; panel data; inequality; Kenya (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 D31 D63 I30 I32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-agr and nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://portal.pep-net.org/documents/download/id/13550 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lvl:pmmacr:2007-20

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers PMMA from PEP-PMMA Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Manuel Paradis ().