Vulnerability to poverty in Papua New Guinea

Raghbendra Jha and Tu Dang

Departmental Working Papers from The Australian National University, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics

Abstract: In the extant literature either income or consumption expenditures as measured over short periods of time has been regarded as proxies for the material well-being of households. However, economists have long recognized that a household's sense of well-being depends not just on its average income or expenditures, but also on the risks it faces. Hence vulnerability is a more satisfactory measure of welfare. In this study we measure the extent of vulnerability as expected poverty and examine the importance of its determinants on the basis of an analysis of household survey data for Papua New Guinea (PNG). We find that in PNG, vulnerability and poverty are largely rural phenomena. Moreover, the distribution of vulnerability across different segments of the population can differ significantly from the distribution of poverty. In addition, there is a sizable fraction of the population of PNG who were observed to be non-poor but are estimated to be vulnerable to poverty. Thus, poverty reduction strategies in PNG need to incorporate not just alleviation efforts but also prevention.

Keywords: Poverty; Vulnerability; Cross-section data; PNG (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 C23 I32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pas:papers:2008-08

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