A SHAPLEY DECOMPOSITION OF MULTIDIMENSIONAL CHRONIC POVERTY IN ARGENTINA

This paper proposes a Shapley decomposition to analyse the evolution of chronic poverty in a multivariate setting using a chronic poverty measure proposed by Alkire and colleagues. The decomposition makes possible to assess a vast array of information to find the drivers of change in chronic poverty, and could be a valuable tool in the way public policy programmes focus resources. We present an empirical application of the changes in chronic poverty in Argentina during the period 2004–12 using the Permanent Household Survey. We found that households with older adults show great persistence of multidimensional chronic poverty in time while the employment indicators is found to be an important driver of the intensity of chronic poverty.     

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.     

Rethinking multidimensional poverty through a multi-criteria analysis

The risk of poverty or social exclusion constitutes the pivotal multidimensional indicator of living conditions in the European Union. Nevertheless, it only reports the proportion of individuals at risk and disregards the depth of poverty. The indicator therefore overlooks situations of possible vulnerable groups just above the threshold and is not sensitive to all dimensions in which the individual is at risk. In this paper we propose an alternative multi-criteria based approach that overcomes these problems. Our measure captures information about the level of achievement in each dimension of all persons along the distribution and evaluates to what extent the concurrence of multiple deprivations reinforces their disadvantage. This approach permits diverse ways of aggregation with different degrees of substitutability among the achievements of each dimension according to context-specific social preferences. We illustrate our approach with an empirical analysis of 28 countries using the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions database for 2016. The results reveal that work intensity may be regarded as the most determining factor in analyses of multidimensional poverty across European countries. Our measures unmask how countries with similar proportions of individuals at risk of poverty or social exclusion hide very different conditions of multidimensional poverty and highlight the variety of socioeconomic realities existing behind the dichotomy imposed by the usual ‘at risk of poverty or social exclusion’ rate.     

The probability of multidimensional poverty: A new approach and an empirical application to EU-SILC data

This paper proposes a novel method to analyze multidimensional poverty by using a large set of feasible weights to summarize the information about the poor, which enables remaining agnostic about the relative importance given to different poverty dimensions. This method allows for the calculation of the individual probability of being poor in a multidimensional perspective. The distribution of individual probabilities can then be combined with Generalized Lorenz dominance techniques to derive unanimous consent for a wide class of social welfare functions with a minimum load of value judgments. The innovations proposed here allow to move from a dual definition of poverty, where poor and non-poor individuals are classified in a mutually exclusive context, to a continuous measure of deprivation capturing both the extensive and intensive margin of multidimensional poverty. The empirical application of the method consists of measuring multidimensional poverty in ten selected countries using four waves of EU-SILC data (2008–2014).     

A NEW MULTIPLICATIVE DECOMPOSITION FOR THE FOSTER–GREER–THORBECKE POVERTY INDICES

This paper shows that Foster–Greer–Thorbecke poverty indices can be written as the product of components summarizing the incidence, intensity and inequality dimensions of poverty and provides an empirical illustration of the decomposition using Spanish household budget surveys data.     

MEASURING POVERTY ACCOUNTING FOR TIME

In this paper we make a methodological proposal to measure poverty accounting for time by proposing a new family of intertemporal poverty indexes that aims at reconciling the way poverty is measured in a static and a dynamic framework. Our index is able to consider the duration of the poverty spell and the social preference for equality in well‐being given that, in contrast with others that have been previously proposed, it is sensitive to the level of inequality between individual complete poverty experiences over time. Moreover, other indices in the literature can be interpreted as special cases of our more general measure. An empirical illustration shows the relevance of considering the distribution of poverty experiences among the population in an international analysis.     

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.     

中国农村居民贫困测度研究——基于山西的调查分析

运用Atkinson（1987）单维贫困测量与Alkire和Foster（2008）多维贫困测量相结合的方法,对山西农村居民贫困情况进行了测度。实证结果表明：从单维视角看,山西农村贫困主要体现在饮用水、消费、收入三个方面,全省三个主要贫困区存在差异;从多维视角来看,山西省农村居民存在多维贫困现象,考虑的贫困维度越多,贫困程度越严重。东部太行山区与北部高寒冷凉区的饮用水问题也比较严重,北部高寒冷凉区相比其他两个地区其教育问题较为突出,北部高寒冷凉区与西部吕梁山区的住房问题也需要关注。因此,山西今后要从多维度识别和瞄准贫困,针对地区贫困特点予以扶持。     

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.     

More Relatively‐Poor People in a Less Absolutely‐Poor World

Relative deprivation, shame, and social exclusion can matter to the welfare of people everywhere. The paper argues that such social effects on welfare call for a reconsideration of how we assess global poverty. We argue for using a weakly‐relative measure as the upper‐bound complement to the lower‐bound provided by a standard absolute measure. New estimates of poverty are presented. The absolute line is $1.25 a day at 2005 prices, while the relative line rises with the mean, at a gradient of 1:2 above $1.25 a day, consistently with national poverty lines. We find that the incidence of both absolute and weakly‐relative poverty in the developing world has been falling since the 1990s, but more slowly for the relative measure. While the number of absolutely poor has fallen, the number of relatively poor has changed little since the 1990s, and is higher in 2008 than 1981.     

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONSECUTIVE SPELLS OF POVERTY: A PATH‐DEPENDENT INDEX OF LONGITUDINAL POVERTY

In this paper we propose a new index of individual poverty in the longitudinal perspective, taking into account the way poverty and non‐poverty spells follow one another along individual life courses. The Poverty Persistence Index (PPI) is based on all the pairwise distances between the waves of poverty. The PPI is normalized and it assigns a higher degree of (longitudinal) poverty to people who experience poverty in consecutive, rather than separated, periods, for whom the distances from the poverty line are larger along time and moreover, when the worst years are consecutive and/or recent. We also propose an aggregate index of persistence in poverty (APPI) in order to measure the distribution of the persistence of poverty in a society, and evaluate at once the diffusion of poverty, its depth, duration, and recentness. The indices are tested in comparison with other measures from the literature both at the individual as well as at the societal level.     

Multi‐asset Deprivation and Pro‐poor Growth in Cameroon

This article analyzes pro‐poor growth of multiple dimensions of household well‐being by sector of activity in Cameroon. It uses (1) a polychoric principal component analysis to construct indicators of household asset endowments, (2) the growth incidence curve to analyze the pro‐poorness of the different assets, and (3) a Shapley value framework decomposition to account for changes in deprivation in terms of within‐sector growth and changes in within‐sector inequality. Data is sourced from the second and third Cameroon household consumption surveys. Results show that: (a) pro‐poor growth is not observed for all assets and households at the bottom of the distribution of the different assets experienced an increase in inequality; (b) for all asset endowments, overall deprivation worsened between 2001 and 2007; (c) whereas the growth component mitigated the worsening incidence, depth and severity of human asset deprivation, both growth and redistribution components accounted for the worsening physical, financial and social asset deprivations; (d) while the tertiary sectors of activity benefited some human asset poverty reduction, all sectors suffered from worsening financial and social asset deprivation. These results have implications for promoting growth and improving the allocation of household assets.     

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.     

中国农村人口贫困变动研究——基于多维脱贫指数测度

本文通过多维贫困识别方法构建相应指数，提出了在返贫和脱贫不同方向上对多维贫困的变动进行分解的思路。同时，用2010—2014年中国家庭追踪调查数据对中国农村人口多维贫困的变动进行了分解，得出以下结论：第一，收入依然是农村人口多维贫困的主要维度，但在改善收入贫困的同时应该防范健康维度返贫的风险。第二，农村人口的多维贫困状况在不断改善，但是由于返贫的影响，脱贫的效果受到了较大削弱，因此在注重脱贫的同时，不应忽视返贫的风险。第三，持续贫困人口贫困状况虽然后来有所改善，但是2012年的恶化状况提示我们对于暂时未能脱贫的人口，还需要采取措施缓解其贫困状况。     

How Should We Measure Poverty in a Changing World? Methodological Issues and Chinese Case Study

This study asks whether, in a rapidly changing world, the estimated proportion of the world's population with income below US$1 (adjusted according to purchasing power parity) per day is still a good measure of trends in poverty. It argues that strong economic growth in nations such as China implies that the commonly accepted international poverty line definition of one half median national equivalent income is increasingly relevant and that poverty intensity (the normalized deficit or Foster–Greer–Thorbecke (FGT) index of order one) is a better summary index. This index has a convenient graphical representation—the “poverty box”. Using the proposed poverty line and the example of ranking the level of rural poverty in Chinese provinces, the study demonstrates how poverty intensity replicates the poverty rankings of the Sen family of poverty indices and captures most of the information content of higher‐order FGT indices.     

How did the Great Recession Affect Gender Disparity in Europe? An Analysis by a Multidimensional Deprivation Approach

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses how the Great Recession affected the gender disparity in material and social deprivation in Europe. We propose multidimensional non-monetary indexes of absolute and relative (i.e. using peer comparisons) deprivations estimated on data from the European Quality of Life Survey for the waves 2007 and 2011. We find that the Great Recession decreased gender disparity over all the dimensions of deprivations. By applying a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition, we estimate that this decline of gender gap has depended on a reduction of the difference in characteristics between genders that has more than offset an increase of gender discrimination.     

The Hunger of Old Women in Rural Tanzania: Can Subjective Data Improve Poverty Measurement?

On average, women in Tanzania are slightly less likely than men to say that they are “always/often without enough food to eat”—but this masks a much higher rate of self‐reported food deprivation among elderly rural women. Official Tanzanian poverty statistics are, however, based on a methodology which presumes equal sharing per equivalent adult within the household. This paper combines subjective and objective micro‐data from Tanzania's 2007 Household Budget Survey and 2007 Views of the People Survey. By imputing individual consumption based on the relative probability of self‐reported food deprivation, it provides an example of the possible importance of one type of intra‐household inequality—i.e., the hunger of old women—for poverty measurement. Implications include the complexity of gendered intra‐household inequality and the importance of “technical” poverty measurement choices for public policy priorities, such as old age pensions.     

Towards a multidimensional poverty index for Germany

This paper proposes a more comprehensive multidimensional poverty index for an advanced economy like Germany. Drawing on the capability approach as conceptual framework, I apply the Alkire–Foster method to the German context. Special attention is paid to the conceptual integration. Specifically, I argue for including material deprivation and employment as important dimensions, but against using an additional lack-of-income indicator. The results are consistent with previous findings and also offer new insights. In particular, I find specific poverty profiles (e.g., for the elderly), but also that gaps in poverty between subpopulations change over time. Importantly, the results suggest that genuine multidimensional measures add unique insights, which neither a single indicator, nor a dashboard approach can offer. Finally, the analysis reveals multidimensional and income-poverty measures to disagree on who is poor. The subsequent analysis of this mismatch lends empirical support to abandon a lack-of-income dimension.     

四省藏区多维贫困空间分异及基层能力建设

四省藏区作为我国深度贫困地区的重要组成部分是精准扶贫精准脱贫中后程的重点和难点。基于2014年采集的“十二五”期间全国“整村推进”项目村基础数据,借鉴A-F多维贫困测度方法,对四省藏区村域多维贫困状况进行测度分解,并基于拓展的能力视角探讨了村级组织能力禀赋对四省藏区村域多维贫困状况的差异化缓解作用。结果发现:除经济贫困之外,四省藏区还遭受基础教育和生产生活条件等维度的多维贫困,且存在空间异质性,云南和青海藏区是四省藏区中多维贫困问题最严重的区域;生活水平条件和村域发展资本维度对四省藏区的多维贫困指数贡献率最高;基层组织能力禀赋会显著影响四省藏区村域的多维贫困状况、缩小地区差距,在深度贫困地区更加显著。根据研究结论,从覆盖基础教育设施、改善生产生活条件、提高基层组织能力建设三方面为深度贫困地区脱贫攻坚提供政策参考。