IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/soecon/v70y2003i2p295-311.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the Relative Well‐Being of the Nonmetropolitan Poor: An Examination of Alternate Definitions of Poverty during the 1990s

Author

Listed:
  • Dean Jolliffe

Abstract

Using Foster‐Greer‐Thorbecke poverty indices, this paper shows that although the incidence of poverty was higher in nonmetropolitan than metropolitan areas throughout the 1990s, the poverty‐gap index was only statistically significantly higher in nonmetropolitan areas in six of the 10 years, and the squared poverty‐gap index was worse in only three years. This paper also provides design‐corrected standard errors for the indices, which result in more than doubling the uncorrected estimates. An examination of the ratio of the poverty‐gap to the head count index establishes that the average shortfall of the poor as a fraction of the poverty line was worse in the metropolitan areas during all 10 years of the 1990s. Similarly, the distribution of income divided by the poverty line indicates that disproportionately more of the nonmetropolitan poor subsisted on incomes near the poverty line, whereas the metropolitan poor were relatively more likely to be living in extreme poverty.

Suggested Citation

  • Dean Jolliffe, 2003. "On the Relative Well‐Being of the Nonmetropolitan Poor: An Examination of Alternate Definitions of Poverty during the 1990s," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 70(2), pages 295-311, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:70:y:2003:i:2:p:295-311
    DOI: 10.1002/j.2325-8012.2003.tb00571.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2325-8012.2003.tb00571.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/j.2325-8012.2003.tb00571.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Maria J. Hanratty & Rebecca M. Blank, 1992. "Down and Out in North America: Recent Trends in Poverty Rates in the United States and Canada," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(1), pages 233-254.
    2. Sawhill, Isabel V, 1988. "Poverty in the U.S.: Why Is It So Persistent?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 26(3), pages 1073-1119, September.
    3. Dean Jolliffe, 2001. "Estimating Sampling Variance from the Current Population Survey: A Synthetic Design Approach to Correcting Standard Errors," Econometrics 0110006, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 20 Oct 2001.
    4. Foster, James & Greer, Joel & Thorbecke, Erik, 1984. "A Class of Decomposable Poverty Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(3), pages 761-766, May.
    5. Ravallion, Martin & Bidani, Benu, 1994. "How Robust Is a Poverty Profile?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 8(1), pages 75-102, January.
    6. Zheng, Buhong, 2001. "Statistical inference for poverty measures with relative poverty lines," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 101(2), pages 337-356, April.
    7. Honig, Marjorie & Filer, Randall K, 1993. "Causes of Intercity Variation in Homelessness," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(1), pages 248-255, March.
    8. Kakwani, Nanak, 1993. "Statistical Inference in the Measurement of Poverty," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 75(4), pages 632-639, November.
    9. Buhong Zheng, 2002. "Testing Lorenz Curves with Non-Simple Random Samples," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(3), pages 1235-1243, May.
    10. Dasgupta, Partha & Sen, Amartya & Starrett, David, 1973. "Notes on the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 180-187, April.
    11. Blackorby, Charles & Donaldson, David, 1987. "Welfare ratios and distributionally sensitive cost-benefit analysis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 265-290, December.
    12. Foster, James E., 1983. "An axiomatic characterization of the Theil measure of income inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 105-121, October.
    13. John M. Quigley & Steven Raphael & Eugene Smolensky, 2001. "Homeless In America, Homeless In California," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(1), pages 37-51, February.
    14. Foster, James E & Shorrocks, Anthony F, 1991. "Subgroup Consistent Poverty Indices," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(3), pages 687-709, May.
    15. Sen, Amartya, 1973. "On Economic Inequality," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198281931.
    16. John Bishop & John Formby & Buhong Zheng, 1999. "Distribution Sensitive Measures of Poverty in the United States," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(3), pages 306-343.
    17. Sen, Amartya K, 1976. "Poverty: An Ordinal Approach to Measurement," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 44(2), pages 219-231, March.
    18. Stephen Howes & Jean Olson Lanjouw, 1998. "Does Sample Design Matter For Poverty Rate Comparisons?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 44(1), pages 99-109, March.
    19. Datt, Gaurav & Ravallion, Martin, 1992. "Growth and redistribution components of changes in poverty measures : A decomposition with applications to Brazil and India in the 1980s," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 275-295, April.
    20. Slesnick, Daniel T, 1993. "Gaining Ground: Poverty in the Postwar United States," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(1), pages 1-38, February.
    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. Orazem, Peter F. & Tran, Thu, 2020. "To Inform or Influence? The Difference between Data Released by Nonprofits and by the Government," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 50(1), March.
    2. Bruce Weber & Leif Jensen & Kathleen Miller & Jane Mosley & Monica Fisher, 2005. "A Critical Review of Rural Poverty Literature: Is There Truly a Rural Effect?," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 28(4), pages 381-414, October.
    3. Newman, Constance, 2003. "Impacts Of Hispanic Population Growth On Rural Wages," Agricultural Economic Reports 33965, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    4. Gundersen, Craig, 2005. "Are The Effects Of The Macroeconomy And Social Policies On Poverty Different In Rural America?," Working Papers 18909, Oregon State University, Rural Poverty Research Center (RPRC).
    5. Jolliffe, Dean, 2006. "The Cost of Living and the Geographic Distribution of Poverty," Economic Research Report 7254, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.

    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. Jolliffe, Dean, 2006. "The Cost of Living and the Geographic Distribution of Poverty," Economic Research Report 7254, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    2. 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.
    3. Kenneth R. Simler & Channing Arndt, 2007. "Poverty Comparisons With Absolute Poverty Lines Estimated From Survey Data," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 53(2), pages 275-294, June.
    4. Sreenivasan Subramanian, 2004. "Indicators of Inequality and Poverty," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2004-25, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    5. 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.
    6. Belhadj, Besma & Limam, Mohamed, 2012. "Unidimensional and multidimensional fuzzy poverty measures: New approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 995-1002.
    7. WANG, Zuxiang & SMYTH, Russell & NG, Yew-Kwang, 2009. "A new ordered family of Lorenz curves with an application to measuring income inequality and poverty in rural China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 218-235, June.
    8. Chen, Shaohua & Ravallion, Martin, 1996. "Data in transition: Assessing rural living standards in Southern China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 23-56.
    9. Breitmeyer, Carsten & Hakenes, Hendrik & Pfingsten, Andreas, 2004. "From poverty measurement to the measurement of downside risk," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 327-348, May.
    10. Albarrán, Pedro & Ortuño, Ignacio & Ruiz-Castillo, Javier, 2011. "The measurement of low- and high-impact in citation distributions: Technical results," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 48-63.
    11. Channing Arndt & Kenneth R. Simler, 2007. "Consistent poverty comparisons and inference," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 37(2‐3), pages 133-139, September.
    12. Robert H. DeFina, 2007. "A comparison of poverty trends and policy impacts for working families using different poverty indexes," Working Papers 07-13, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    13. Jolliffe, Dean, 2006. "The Income Gradient and Distribution-Sensitive Measures of Overweight in the U.S," 2006 Annual Meeting, August 12-18, 2006, Queensland, Australia 25677, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    14. Allanson, Paul & Hubbard, Lionel, 1999. "On the Comparative Evaluation of Agricultural Income Distributions in the European Union," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 26(1), pages 1-17, March.
    15. Samuel Fambon, 2005. "Croissance économique, pauvreté et inégalité des revenus au Cameroun," Revue d’économie du développement, De Boeck Université, vol. 13(1), pages 91-122.
    16. Francesco Andreoli & Claudio Zoli, 2020. "From unidimensional to multidimensional inequality: a review," METRON, Springer;Sapienza Università di Roma, vol. 78(1), pages 5-42, April.
    17. Srinivas Goli & Nagendra Kumar Maurya & Moradhvaj & Prem Bhandari, 2019. "Regional Differentials in Multidimensional Poverty in Nepal: Rethinking Dimensions and Method of Computation," SAGE Open, , vol. 9(1), pages 21582440198, March.
    18. Jalan, Jyotsna & Ravallion, Martin, 1996. "Transient poverty in rural China," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1616, The World Bank.
    19. Duclos, Jean-Yves & Sahn, David E. & Younger, Stephen D., 2011. "Partial multidimensional inequality orderings," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(3), pages 225-238.
    20. Tim Goedemé, 2013. "How much Confidence can we have in EU-SILC? Complex Sample Designs and the Standard Error of the Europe 2020 Poverty Indicators," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 110(1), pages 89-110, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:wly:soecon:v:70:y:2003:i:2:p:295-311. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)2325-8012 .

    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.