IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/rp2006-64.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Should We Measure Global Poverty in a Changing World?

Author

Listed:
  • Lars Osberg
  • Kuan Xu

Abstract

Before effective anti-poverty policy can be designed and implemented, the extent, trend and distribution of poverty must be identified. In this sense, poverty measurement is a crucial intermediate step in public policymaking and development planning. This paper asks whether the estimated proportion of the world's population with income below US$1 (adjusted according to purchasing power parity) per day is a good measure of trends in global poverty.

Suggested Citation

  • Lars Osberg & Kuan Xu, 2006. "How Should We Measure Global Poverty in a Changing World?," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2006-64, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:rp2006-64
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/rp2006-64.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard V. Burkhauser & Timothy M. Smeeding & Joachim Merz, 1996. "Relative Inequality And Poverty In Germany And The United States Using Alternative Equivalence Scales," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 42(4), pages 381-400, December.
    2. François Bourguignon & Satya R. Chakravarty, 2019. "The Measurement of Multidimensional Poverty," Themes in Economics, in: Satya R. Chakravarty (ed.), Poverty, Social Exclusion and Stochastic Dominance, pages 83-107, Springer.
    3. Fields, Gary S, 1977. "Who Benefits from Economic Development?-A Reexamination of Brazilian Growth in the 1960's," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(4), pages 570-582, September.
    4. Clark, Stephen & Hemming, Richard & Ulph, David, 1981. "On Indices for the Measurement of Poverty," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 91(362), pages 515-526, June.
    5. Coulter, Fiona A E & Cowell, Frank A & Jenkins, Stephen P, 1992. "Equivalence Scale Relativities and the Extent of Inequality and Poverty," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 102(414), pages 1067-1082, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hudec, Oto & Urbančíková, Nataša & Džupka, Peter & Šebová, Miriam & Klimovský, Daniel & Suhányi, Ladislav & Želinský, Tomáš, 2009. "Podoby regionálneho a miestneho rozvoja [Patterns of Regional and Local Development]," MPRA Paper 113811, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Lars Osberg & Jiaping Shao & Kuan Xu, 2009. "The growth of poor children in China 1991–2000: why food subsidies may matter," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(S1), pages 89-108, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jean‐Yves Duclos & Paul Makdissi, 2005. "Sequential Stochastic Dominance And The Robustness Of Poverty Orderings," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 51(1), pages 63-87, March.
    2. Sami Bibi & Paul Makdissi & Myra Yazbeck, 2012. "Equivalence scales and housing deprivation orderings: an example using Lebanese data," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(7), pages 853-866, March.
    3. James Foster & Joel Greer & Erik Thorbecke, 2010. "The Foster–Greer–Thorbecke (FGT) poverty measures: 25 years later," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 8(4), pages 491-524, December.
    4. James E. Foster & Joel Greer & Erik Thorbecke, 2010. "The Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) Poverty Measures: Twenty-Five Years Later," Working Papers 2010-14, The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy.
    5. Chakravarty, Satya R. & Deutsch, Joseph & Silber, Jacques, 2008. "On the Watts Multidimensional Poverty Index and its Decomposition," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 1067-1077, June.
    6. Lars Osberg, 2002. "How Much does Work Matter for Inequality? Time, Money and Inequality in International Perspective," LIS Working papers 326, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    7. Castagna Alina & Ciommi Mariateresa & Furia Donatella & Odoardi Iacopo, 2010. "Reducing Poverty As A Driver Of Development," Annals of Faculty of Economics, University of Oradea, Faculty of Economics, vol. 1(2), pages 208-213, December.
    8. Andrea Brandolini, 2013. "Poverty," Chapters, in: Luigino Bruni & Stefano Zamagni (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Reciprocity and Social Enterprise, chapter 26, pages 261-270, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Núñez Velázquez, José Javier, 2009. "Estado actual y nuevas aproximaciones a la medición de la pobreza/Current Status and New Approaches to the Measurement of Poverty," Estudios de Economia Aplicada, Estudios de Economia Aplicada, vol. 27, pages 325-346, Agosto.
    10. Basu, Kaushik & Foster, James E, 1998. "On Measuring Literacy," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 108(451), pages 1733-1749, November.
    11. Frank A Cowell & Julie Litchfield, 1999. "Income Inequality Comparisons with Dirty Data: The UK and Spain during the 1980s," STICERD - Distributional Analysis Research Programme Papers 45, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    12. Bönke, Timm & Schröder, Carsten, 2007. "Equivalence scales reconsidered: an empirical investigation," Economics Working Papers 2007-31, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Department of Economics.
    13. Sabina Alkire, 2008. "Concepts and Measures of Agency," OPHI Working Papers 9, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
    14. Dipesh Gangopadhyay & Robert B. Nielsen & Velma Zahirovic-Herbert, 2021. "Methodology and Axiomatic Characterization of a Multidimensional and Fuzzy Measure of Deprivation," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 153(1), pages 1-37, January.
    15. Martina Menon & Federico Perali & Eva Sierminska, 2016. "An asset-based indicator of wellbeing for a unified means testing tool: Money metric or counting approach?," Working Papers 421, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    16. Satya R. Chakravarty & Pietro Muliere, 2004. "Welfare indicators: a review and new perspectives. 2. Measurement of poverty," Metron - International Journal of Statistics, Dipartimento di Statistica, Probabilità e Statistiche Applicate - University of Rome, vol. 0(2), pages 247-281.
    17. Gian Maria Tomat, 2014. "Revisiting poverty and welfare dominance," ECONOMIA PUBBLICA, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2014(2), pages 125-149.
    18. Mysikova, Martina & Zelinsky, Tomas, 2019. "On the Measurement of the Income Poverty Rate: the Equivalence Scale across Europe," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 99(4), pages 383-397.
    19. K. Mosler & C. Scheicher, 2008. "Attenuation of relative poverty by taxes and subsidies," Metron - International Journal of Statistics, Dipartimento di Statistica, Probabilità e Statistiche Applicate - University of Rome, vol. 0(3), pages 265-283.
    20. Patrick MOYES, 2008. "Poverty Measurement in Economics (In French)," Cahiers du GREThA (2007-2019) 2008-06, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Théorique et Appliquée (GREThA).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:rp2006-64. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Siméon Rapin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/widerfi.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.