Combining absolute and relative poverty: income poverty measurement with two poverty lines

Benoît Decerf ()

Social Choice and Welfare, 2021, vol. 56, issue 2, No 5, 325-362

Abstract: Abstract I study income poverty indices in a framework considering two poverty lines: one absolute line capturing subsistence and one relative line capturing social exclusion. In this framework, a set of basic axioms à la Foster and Shorrocks (Econometrica 59(3): 687–709, 1991) characterizes the class of hierarchical indices. This is a class of additive indices for which the poverty contribution of any individual depends on both her income and the income standard in her society. The key feature of hierarchical indices is to grant some form of precedence to absolutely poor individuals. These indices always consider that an absolutely poor individual is poorer than an individual who is only relatively poor, regardless of the income standard in their respective societies. Classical indices are not hierarchical, except in trivial cases. As a result, they yield debatable poverty comparisons of societies having different income standards.

JEL-codes: D63 I32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00355-020-01279-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
Working Paper: Combining absolute and relative poverty: Income poverty measurement with two poverty lines (2020)
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:spr:sochwe:v:56:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1007_s00355-020-01279-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... c+theory/journal/355

DOI: 10.1007/s00355-020-01279-7

Access Statistics for this article

Social Choice and Welfare is currently edited by Bhaskar Dutta, Marc Fleurbaey, Elizabeth Maggie Penn and Clemens Puppe

More articles in Social Choice and Welfare from Springer, The Society for Social Choice and Welfare Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().