Poverty Lines in History, Theory, and Current International Practice

Robert Allen

No 685, Economics Series Working Papers from University of Oxford, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper compares historical poverty baskets to modern food security and poverty lines. Changes in the historical baskets and indexing methods are proposed to bring historical studies into better alignment with modern measures as well as with historically based estimates of energy requirements. In addition, it is argued that modern poverty measures could be improved by emulating the historical methods.

Keywords: poverty measurement; poverty line; subsistence ratio; nutritional standards; food security (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I32 N30 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-12-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev and nep-his
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (25)

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