Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
5101771 Journal of Public Economics 2017 31 Pages PDF
Abstract
No current strategy to measure income poverty is able to (i) account for both its absolute and relative aspects and (ii) always consider that an individual who is absolutely poor is poorer than another individual who is only relatively poor. I propose a measure of income poverty satisfying (i) and (ii). Unlike alternative proposals satisfying (i), a decrease in a poor individual's income never reduces this measure. An application illustrates that the measure yields intuitive judgments about unequal growth experiences, for which all absolute (resp. relative) poverty measures systematically conclude that poverty has decreased (resp. increased).
Related Topics
Social Sciences and Humanities Economics, Econometrics and Finance Economics and Econometrics
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