中国多维贫困的动态测算、结构分解与精准扶贫

贫困的多维福利剥夺程度高低和持续时间长短是近年来理论界关注的焦点,也是政府制定精准扶贫政策的重要理论依据.文章综合Alkire和Foster(2011)提出的多维贫困测算方法和Foster(2009)提出的长期贫困测算方法,构建了长期多维贫困指数和暂时多维贫困指数,实证分析了中国的贫困状况,并进行了城乡分解、指标分解和区域分解.结果发现:第一,样本家庭在多维视角下的长期贫困比例要高于暂时贫困,这与单一地从收入角度来分析长期贫困和暂时贫困的结论恰好相反;第二,对于所有类型的贫困而言,教育年限、医疗保险和健康的贡献度都排在前三位,但健康对于长期贫困人口的贡献度要明显高于暂时贫困;第三,总体看来,农村的多维贫困程度不仅高于城市,而且很多指标的贫困持续时间也要高于城市;第四,从四大区域看,经济发展水平较低的中西部地区,长期多维贫困程度要高于东部和东北部地区.     

FGT Old‐Age Poverty Measures and the Mortality Paradox: Theory and Evidence

Income‐differentiated mortality, by reducing the share of poor persons in the population, leads to the “Mortality Paradox”: the worse the survival conditions of the poor are, the lower is the measured poverty. We show that FGT measures (Foster et al ., 1984 ) are, in general, not robust to variations in survival conditions. Then, following Kanbur and Mukherjee ( 2007 ), we propose to adjust FGT poverty measures by extending the income profiles of the prematurely dead, and we identify the condition under which so‐adjusted FGT measures are robust to mortality changes. Finally, we show, on the basis of data from 2007 on old‐age poverty in 11 European economies, that the effect of extending income profiles of the prematurely dead on poverty measurement varies with: (1) the fictitious income assigned to the prematurely dead; (2) the degree of poverty aversion; (3) the shape of the (unadjusted) income distribution; and (4) the strength of the income/mortality relationship.     

“When Life Gives You Lemons”: Using Cross-Sectional Surveys to Identify Chronic Poverty in the Absence of Panel Data

At the core of poverty eradication is the need to eliminate that poverty that is persistent over time (chronic poverty). Unfortunately, traditional approaches to identifying chronic poverty require longitudinal data that is rarely available. In its absence, this paper proposes an alternative approach that only requires 1 year of cross-sectional data on monetary and non-monetary poverty. It puts forth two conjectures and contends that the combined profile of a household as both income poor and multidimensionally poor can be used as a proxy of that household being chronically income poor. To explore the viability of this approach, we use a probit model and longitudinal data for three Latin American countries to estimate households’ probabilities of remaining in income poverty based on their past income and multidimensional poverty statuses. We find empirical support for the approach that is significant, consistent across countries, and robust to various controls and periods of analysis.     

Contributions of Longitudinal Data to Poverty Measurement in Australia*

Chronic poverty is of greater social consequence than transitory poverty but its measurement requires longitudinal data. This article uses six waves of data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey to explore the extent to which longitudinal data contribute to what is known about poverty from cross‐section data. We find an imperfect correspondence between people’s annual poverty status and chronic poverty status. Consequently, policies that aim to reduce chronic poverty using means‐tested benefits may be partially misdirected if beneficiaries are identified using annual income. Furthermore, some households experiencing chronic poverty may fall through the safety net.     

Mismatch between Material Deprivation and Income Poverty: The Case of Turkey

By employing cross-sectional data obtained from Survey of Income and Living Conditions for the years from 2007 to 2011, we analyze the identification problem of the poor by using both monetary and non-monetary measures. We classify the poor into the following categories: (i) poor in monetary and nonmonetary measures, (ii) poor in monetary measure only, (iii) poor in non-monetary measure only, and (iv) non-poor in both categories. We examine the determinants of each category by utilizing the probit model and find that the share of workers in adults — or the share of informal or agricultural workers — creates some disparities between poverty at a country and regional level.     

A Multidimensional Poverty Index for Latin America

This paper proposes a new Multidimensional Poverty Index for Latin America. The index combines monetary and non‐monetary indicators, updates deprivation cut‐offs for certain traditional unsatisfied basic needs indicators and includes some new indicators, aiming to maximize regional comparability within the data constraints. The index is estimated for 17 countries of the region at two points in time—one around 2005 and the other around 2012. Overall, we estimate about 28 percent of people are multidimensionally poor in 2012 in the region. We find statistically significant reductions of poverty in most countries, both in terms of incidence and intensity over the period under analysis. However, important disparities between rural and urban areas remain. Statistical scrutiny of the index suggests that it captures the state of poverty relatively well while maintaining a certain parsimony and being highly robust to changes in weights, indicators, and poverty cut‐off.     

Multidimensional Poverty and Material Deprivation with Discrete Data

We propose a characterization of a popular index of multidimensional poverty which, as a special case, generates a measure of material deprivation. This index is the weighted sum of the functioning failures. The important feature of the variables that may be relevant for poverty assessments is that they are discrete in nature. Thus, poverty measures based on continuous variables are not suitable in this setting and the assumption of a discrete domain is mandatory. We apply the measure to European Union member states where the concept of material deprivation was initiated and illustrate how its recommendations differ from those obtained from poverty measures based exclusively on income considerations.     

Poverty is a Public Bad: Panel Evidence From Subjective Well‐Being Data

Previous research has found that subjective well‐being (SWB) is lower for individuals classified as being in poverty. We extend the poverty‐SWB literature by focusing on aggregate poverty. Using panel data for 39,239 individuals living in Germany from 2005–2013, we show that people's SWB is negatively correlated with the regional (state‐level) poverty ratio while controlling for individual poverty status and poverty intensity. This suggests that poverty is a public bad. The negative relationship between aggregate poverty and SWB is more salient in the upper segments of the income distribution and is robust to controlling for the rate of unemployment and per capita GDP. The character of poverty as a public bad suggests that poverty alleviation is a matter not only of distributive justice, but of allocative efficiency.     

Using the Consumer Expenditure Survey to Teach Poverty Measurement

Poverty measurement is often controversial, but good public policy relies crucially on a broadly supported and understood poverty measure. In 2010, the U.S. Census Bureau announced it would begin regular reporting of a new supplemental poverty measure in October 2011. The present article provides background information for a student exercise (available, on request, from the author) on alternative poverty measurement techniques. The exercise allows students to use current data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (available through the Bureau of Labor Statistics at http://www.bls.gov/cex/; U.S. Department of Labor 2010 U.S. Bureau of the Census. 2011. Developing a Supplemental Poverty Measure Federal Register. May 26, Vol. 75, No. 101, http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2010/pdf/2010-12628.pdf (accessed May 15, 2011) [Google Scholar]) and other sources to calculate and compare several absolute and relative poverty thresholds. The exercise invites students to draw their own conclusions about the pros and cons of different measures, including the new supplemental measure. Data sources are easily updated as new information becomes available.     

Unit-Consistent Poverty Indices

This paper characterizes unit-consistent poverty indices. The unit consistency axiom requires that poverty rankings (not poverty indices) remain unaffected when all incomes and the poverty lines are expressed in different measuring units. We consider two general frameworks of poverty measurement: the semi-individualistic framework that includes all decomposable indices and all rank-based indices; and the Dalton–Hagenaars framework that contains a subset of decomposable indices. Within the semi-individualistic framework, classes of unit-consistent poverty indices can be characterized for different value judgements about poverty measurement. Within the Dalton-Hagenaars framework, unit-consistent poverty indices are completely characterized without invoking any value judgement a priori. I thank Peter Lambert, Mike Hoy, Thesia Garner and an anonymous referee for their very helpful comments and suggestions.     

Decomposing poverty changes into vertical and horizontal components

Variations in aggregate poverty indices can be due to differences in average poverty intensity, to changes in the welfare distances between those poor of initially unequal welfare status and/or to emerging disparities in welfare among those poor of initially similar welfare status. This note uses a general cost‐of‐inequality approach that decomposes the total change in poverty into a sum of indices of each of these three components. This decomposition can serve inter alia to integrate horizontal and vertical equity criteria in the poverty alleviation assessment of social and economic programmes. The use of these measures is briefly illustrated using Tunisian data.     

Poverty Intensity in Australia

Even though poverty indices with axiomatically sound properties have been advocated for several decades, most empirical studies of poverty in Australia and elsewhere continue to use the crude, but easily understood, head-count ratio. The difficulty of interpreting the axiomatically more desirable indices is a major reason why their use has been resisted in applied poverty measurement. This paper demonstrates how the more sophisticated poverty indices can be converted into a form that is readily interpreted as a measure of poverty intensity of a group, relative to the population to which the group belongs. The resulting poverty-intensity index is easy to understand and it retains the axiomatic properties of the poverty index on which it is based. We apply the method to Australian data. Poverty measures reported previously in the literature are converted into measures of poverty intensity and interpreted accordingly. We also calculate and interpret some new measures of poverty and poverty intensity using the 1996–97 Income and Housing Costs Survey, Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics 1997). It is hoped our procedure will lead to wider use of poverty indices that are theoretically superior to the head-count ratio.     

Same Question But Different Answer: Experimental Evidence on Questionnaire Design's Impact on Poverty Measured by Proxies

Based on a randomized survey experiment that was implemented in Malawi, the study finds that observationally‐equivalent, as well as same, households answer the same questions differently depending on whether they are interviewed with a short questionnaire or its longer counterpart. Statistically significant differences in reporting emerge across all topics and question types. In proxy‐based poverty measurement, these reporting differences lead to significantly different predicted poverty rates and Gini coefficients. The difference in poverty predictions ranges from 3 to 7 percentage points, depending on the model specification. A prediction model based only on the proxies that are elicited prior to the variation in questionnaire design yields identical poverty predictions irrespective of the short‐versus‐long questionnaire treatment. The results are relevant for estimating trends with questionnaires exhibiting inter‐temporal variation in design, impact evaluations administering questionnaires of different length and complexity to treatment and control samples, and development programs utilizing proxy‐means tests for targeting.     

A Behavior‐Based Approach to the Estimation of Poverty in India

Estimates of poverty in India are crucial inputs for the understanding of world poverty, yet there is much disagreement about the numbers and the legitimacy of methods used to derive them. In this paper, we propose and justify an alternative approach to identify the poor, which uses the proportion of income spent on food. Our estimates have weaker data requirements than official methods, and they compare favorably with several validation tests. Most notably, households around our state poverty lines obtain their calories from similar sources, whereas this is not true of official poverty lines. We also find that rates of self‐reported hunger are higher in states that we classify as poor.     

Poverty Dynamics in Turkey

This paper examines poverty dynamics in Turkey using a nationally representative panel data covering the 2005–08 period. The aim is to understand mobility in and out of poverty and its correlates. We find that almost a quarter of the poor are persistently poor. The conditional and unconditional exit rates that we estimate are within the range of values reported for developed countries in the literature. That the income events—but not transfers—dominate both poverty entries and exits is indicative of the major role labor markets play in the lives of the poor. In particular, we argue that given the characteristics of the poor and modest levels of social assistance, the reason for mobility rates close to European averages must be sought in the informal economy.     

Testing Prediction Performance of Poverty Models: Empirical Evidence from Uganda

This paper examines the performance of a method of predicting poverty rates. Because most developing countries cannot justify the expense of frequent household budget surveys, additional low‐cost methods have been developed and used. The prediction method is based on a model linking the proportion of poor households to suitable explanatory variables (consumption proxies). These consumption proxies are variables that can be collected at much lower cost through smaller annual surveys. Several applications have shown that such models can produce poverty estimates with confidence intervals of a similar magnitude to the poverty estimates from the household budget surveys. There is, however, limited evidence of how well the methods perform out‐of‐sample. A series of seven household budget surveys conducted in Uganda in the period 1993–2005 allows us to test the prediction performance of the model. We test the poverty models by using data from one survey to predict the proportion of poor households in other surveys, and vice versa. The results are encouraging, as all models predict similar poverty trends. Although in most cases the predictions are precise, sometimes they differ significantly from the poverty level estimated from the survey directly.     

多维贫困测量及述评简

贫困的测量是各国贫困研究关注的焦点,测量方法随着对贫困概念认识的深化不断变化。如何科学合理地对多维贫困指数进行筛选,成为多维贫困分析和测量的关键。研究发现,非公理标准下的多维贫困指数具有算法简单、操作方便等优点,但缺陷在于各维度间相关性较强且权重分配具有主观性;公理化标准下的多维贫困指数,虽然在指数维度加总问题上存在异议,但满足了大部分公理的要求,且测量结果更稳健。     

The Elasticity of Poverty with respect to Sectoral Growth in Africa

The African continent has grown by more than 4 percent yearly on average during the past decade. However, the link between this remarkable growth rate and poverty reduction is neither obvious nor simple. This paper focuses on the elasticity of poverty with respect to GDP growth at the sectoral level and takes into account the fact that economic growth may affect poverty directly as well as indirectly through sectoral labor share intensity. It develops a methodology that sheds light on the contribution of sectoral growth to poverty reduction country‐by‐country in Africa, guiding policy recommendations. As the composition of growth matters at least as much as its overall intensity, it is key to identify the sectors that have the strongest impact on poverty reduction and unleash their potential; if growth happens to concentrate in sectors with scarce pro‐poor potential, like commodity‐driven growth, redistributive strategies are necessary to compensate the weak effect on poverty.     

Differentiating Between Dimensionality and Duration in Multidimensional Measures of Poverty: Methodology with an Application to China

We develop a multidimensional poverty measure that is sensitive to the within‐individual distribution of deprivations across dimensions and time. Our measure combines features from a static multidimensional measure (Alkire and Foster, 2011a ) and a time‐dependent unidimensional measure (Foster, 2009 ). The proposed measure separately identifies—and can therefore be decomposed according to—the proportion of the poverty score attributable to: (i) the concentration of deprivations within periods; (ii) the concentration of deprivations within dimensions. In doing so it allows for a poverty ranking that is robust to assumptions about the trade‐off between the two components. Previous measures have not allowed for the features proposed here due to the inability to calculate the exact contribution of each dimension to overall poverty. We overcome this by adapting to our measure the Shapley decomposition proposed in Shorrocks ( 2013 ) (based on Shapley, 1953 ). The measure is applied to data from China, 2000‐2011.     

Decomposing Vulnerability to Poverty

This paper applies the decomposition of the Foster–Greer–Thorbecke poverty index to the measurement of individual vulnerability to poverty. I highlight that poverty risk can be expressed as a function of expected incidence, expected intensity, and expected variability below the poverty line, three essential aspects for improving the design of appropriate risk‐management policies. An empirical illustration is provided using the British Household Panel Survey and the Italian Survey on Household Income and Wealth.