Estimating Poverty for Refugees in Data-scarce Contexts: An Application of Cross-Survey Imputation

Hai-Anh Dang () and Paolo Verme

No 578, Working Papers from ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality

Abstract: The increasing growth of forced displacement worldwide has brought more attention to measuring poverty among refugee populations. However, refugee data remain scarce, particularly regarding income or consumption. We offer a first attempt to measure poverty among refugees using cross-survey imputation and administrative and survey data collected by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Employing a small number of predictors currently available in the UNHCR registration system, the proposed methodology offers out-of-sample predicted poverty rates that are not statistically different from the actual poverty rates. These estimates are robust to different poverty lines, perform well according to targeting indicators, and are more accurate than those based on asset indexes or proxy means tests. They can also be obtained with relatively small samples. We also show that it is feasible to provide poverty estimates for one geographical region based on the existing data from another similar region.

Keywords: poverty imputation; Syrian refugees; household survey; missing data; Jordan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C15 I32 J15 J61 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2021-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara and nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://www.ecineq.org/milano/WP/ECINEQ2021-578.pdf First version, 2021 (application/pdf)

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Journal Article: Estimating poverty for refugees in data-scarce contexts: an application of cross-survey imputation (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inq:inqwps:ecineq2021-578

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