Poverty comparisons with non-compatible data: theory and illustrations

Jean Lanjouw and Peter Lanjouw

No 1709, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Comparisons of poverty rates are only rarely based on identical underlying definitions of welfare. The authors examine the sensitivity of poverty rates calculated from alternative definitions of consumption. They consider what theory can say about the direction of bias in comparisons and show that under certain conditions robust comparisons are possible. Data from Ecuador, El Salvador, and Pakistan show that the magnitude of biases can be substantial. Their robustness result is used as a baseline to explore the tradeoffs involved in aggregating noisy expenditure components. Although nonfood expenditures are often thought to be especially poorly measured, the authors'data indicate that the more comprehensive is the measure of consumption spending, the better it is as a measure of welfare.

Keywords: Public Health Promotion; Environmental Economics&Policies; Poverty Reduction Strategies; Health Economics&Finance; Services&Transfers to Poor; Poverty Reduction Strategies; Achieving Shared Growth; Poverty Assessment; Environmental Economics&Policies; Poverty Lines (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1997-01-31
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSC ... d/PDF/multi_page.pdf (application/pdf)

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:wbk:wbrwps:1709

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi (ryazigi@worldbank.org).