Counting the missing poor in pre-industrial societies

Mathieu Lefebvre, Pierre Pestieau and Gregory Ponthiere

Cliometrica, 2023, vol. 17, issue 1, No 6, 155-183

Abstract: Abstract Under income-differentiated mortality, poverty measures suffer from a selection bias: they do not count the missing poor (i.e., persons who would have been counted as poor provided they did not die prematurely). The Pre-Industrial period being characterized by an evolutionary advantage (i.e., a higher number of surviving children per household) of the non-poor over the poor, one may expect that the missing poor bias is substantial during that period. This paper quantifies the missing poor bias in Pre-Industrial societies, by computing the hypothetical headcount poverty rates that would have prevailed provided the non-poor did not benefit from an evolutionary advantage over the poor. Using data on Pre-Industrial England and France, we show that the sign and size of the missing poor bias are sensitive to the degree of downward social mobility.

Keywords: Poverty; Measurement; Selection effects; Missing poor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I32 N33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Journal Article: Counting the missing poor in pre-industrial societies (2023)
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Working Paper: Counting the missing poor in pre-industrial societies (2023)
Working Paper: Counting the missing poor in pre-industrial societies (2023)
Working Paper: Counting the Missing Poor in Pre-Industrial Societies (2021)
Working Paper: Counting the Missing Poor in Pre-Industrial Societies (2021)
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DOI: 10.1007/s11698-022-00243-y

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