Measuring Water-Poverty Relationship in Algeria Using ROC Curves

Recent literature on poverty alleviation policies has focused on one direction of discourse by considering poverty as a dependant variable based on some objective (monetary) and subjective (social contacts). Results have not been satisfactory so far. The importance of factors, other than income, in determining living conditions such as education, gender, water and characteristics inherent to society can contribute greatly to explaining the acuteness of poverty (Benhabib, Ziani, Maliki, 2006). The aim of this paper is to quantify the subjective poverty of Algerian households by taking into consideration one of the factors— namely water domestic characteristics — as the direct focus1. We attempt to apply the Receiver Operating Characteristics ROC to determine the truly poor household through the water factor. This method has the advantage of eliminating the poverty line which is based on monetary factors. The methodology consists of classifying, as a first step, the households into two categories, subjective poor and non subjective poor. In the second step a graded scale is applied. In this case, the responses from the heads of the households are the basis of the scaling process. Finally we introduce the household’s water factors.