Household Surveys, Consumption, and the Measurement of Poverty

Angus Deaton

Economic Systems Research, 2003, vol. 15, issue 2, 135-159

Abstract: Household surveys are playing an increasingly important role in the measurement of poverty and well-being around the world. The Living Standards Measurement Study, which was begun in the World Bank under the guidance of Graham Pyatt in 1979, has played an important role in this movement. Its surveys are widely used within the Bank to measure consumption-based poverty, and survey data are now the exclusive basis for the global poverty counts. This paper discusses a number of unresolved issues in using consumption-based surveys for measuring well-being, including the choice of a money-metric versus welfare-ratio approach, the collection of suitable price information, the effects of measurement error on estimation, and methods for correcting per capita consumption for the demographic structure of the household.

Keywords: Household Surveys; Consumption; Poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (41)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0953531032000091144 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:taf:ecsysr:v:15:y:2003:i:2:p:135-159

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CESR20

DOI: 10.1080/0953531032000091144

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Systems Research is currently edited by Bart Los and Manfred Lenzen

More articles in Economic Systems Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().