Measuring poverty without the mortality paradox

Mathieu Lefebvre, Pierre Pestieau and Gregory Ponthiere

No 2011068, LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Abstract: Under income-differentiated mortality, poverty measures reflect not only the "true" poverty, but, also, the interferences or noise caused by the survival process at work. Such interferences lead to the Mortality Paradox: the worse the survival conditions of the poor are, the lower the measured poverty is. We examine several solutions to avoid that paradox. We identify conditions under which the extension, by means of a fictitious income, of lifetime income profiles of the prematurely dead neutralizes the noise due to differential mortality. Then, to account not only for the "missing" poor, but, also, for the "hidden" poverty (premature death), we use, as a fictitious income, the welfare-neutral income, making indifferent between life continuation and death. The robustness of poverty measures to the extension technique is illustrated with regional Belgian data.

Keywords: premature mortality; income-differentiated mortality; poverty measurement; censored income profile (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-12-31
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Measuring poverty without the Mortality Paradox (2013)
Working Paper: Measuring poverty without the mortality paradox (2013)
Working Paper: Measuring poverty without the Mortality Paradox (2013)
Working Paper: Measuring poverty without the Mortality Paradox (2013)
Working Paper: Measuring Poverty Without The Mortality Paradox (2011)
Working Paper: Measuring Poverty Without The Mortality Paradox (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cor:louvco:2011068

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