The Measurement of Dynamic Poverty with Geographical and Intertemporal Price Variability

christophe MULLER ()

Working Papers Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford

Abstract: Little attention has been devoted to the effects of absolute and relative prices variability at local and seasonal levels, for the measurement of living standards in LDCs. In particular, it is not known if a substantial share of welfare or poverty indicators may be the consequence of price differences rather than of differences in living standards across households and seasons. With exogenous poverty lines, we show how the directions of effects of accounting for price variability can be theoretically established for popular poverty indices. With endogenous poverty lines, using data from Rwanda, we show that the composition of the population of the poor can be notably modified by accounting for price variability. The change in aggregate living standards due to price correction is moderate although significant in every quarter, in contrast with the change in poverty which can be considerable. The correction yields generally a larger transient seasonal share of annual poverty. In terms of impact of the price correction on the assessment of poverty, the poverty line or the quarter are generally more influential than the formula of the poverty indicator. Though, poverty indicators giving a high importance to the severity of poverty are more likely to lead to a strong effect of prices. However, the sign of change in poverty indicator is not systematically related with parameters of poverty indices or with poverty lines.

Keywords: POVERTY; INCOME DISTRIBUTION (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I32 O15 D31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998
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