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Population Growth and Poverty Measurement

Author

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  • Chakravarty, Satya R.
  • Kanbur, Ravi
  • Mukherjee, Diganta
Abstract
If the absolute number of poor people goes up, but the fraction of people in poverty comes down, has poverty gone up or gone down? The economist’s instinct, framed by population replication axioms that undergird standard measures of poverty, is to say that in this case poverty has gone down. But this goes against the instinct of those who work directly with the poor, for whom the absolute numbers notion makes more sense as they cope with more poor on the streets or in the soup kitchens. This paper attempts to put these two conceptions of poverty into a common framework. Specifically, it presents an axiomatic development of a family of poverty measures without a population replication axiom. This family has an intuitive link to standard measures, but it also allows one or other of “the absolute numbers” or the “fraction in poverty” conception to be given greater weight by the choice of relevant parameters. We hope that this family will prove useful in empirical and policy work where it is important to give both views of poverty—the economist’s and the practitioner’s—their due.

Suggested Citation

  • Chakravarty, Satya R. & Kanbur, Ravi & Mukherjee, Diganta, 2002. "Population Growth and Poverty Measurement," Working Papers 127303, Cornell University, Department of Applied Economics and Management.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:cudawp:127303
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.127303
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Buhong Zheng, 1997. "Aggregate Poverty Measures," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(2), pages 123-162, June.
    2. Kanbur Ravi, 2001. "Economic Policy, Distribution and Poverty: The Nature of Disagreements," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 7(2), pages 122-145, April.
    3. Foster, James & Greer, Joel & Thorbecke, Erik, 1984. "A Class of Decomposable Poverty Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(3), pages 761-766, May.
    4. Broome, John, 1996. "The Welfare Economics of Population," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 48(2), pages 177-193, April.
    5. Satya R. Chakravarty, 2019. "A New Index of Poverty," Themes in Economics, in: Satya R. Chakravarty (ed.), Poverty, Social Exclusion and Stochastic Dominance, pages 31-37, Springer.
    6. K. J. Arrow & A. K. Sen & K. Suzumura (ed.), 2002. "Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare," Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    7. Shorrocks, Anthony F, 1995. "Revisiting the Sen Poverty Index," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(5), pages 1225-1230, September.
    8. Blakorby, Charles & Donaldson, David, 1980. "Ethical Indices for the Measurement of Poverty," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 1053-1060, May.
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    Cited by:

    1. Nicole Hassoun, 2010. "Another Mere Addition Paradox?: Some Reflections on Variable Population Poverty Measurement," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2010-120, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Julia Paxton, 2003. "A poverty outreach index and its application to microfinance," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 9(2), pages 1-10.
    3. John COCKBURN & Jean-Yves DUCLOS & Agnès ZABSONRÉ, 2011. "Is the value of humanity increasing? A critical-level enquiry," Working Papers I13, FERDI.
    4. Sreenivasan Subramanian, 2004. "Indicators of Inequality and Poverty," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2004-25, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    5. Cockburn, John & Duclos, Jean-Yves & Zabsonré, Agnès, 2014. "Is global social welfare increasing? A critical-level enquiry," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 151-162.
    6. Anthony B. Atkinson & Andrea Brandolini, 2010. "On Analyzing the World Distribution of Income," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 24(1), pages 1-37, January.
    7. Decerf,Benoit Marie A, 2022. "Normative Indicators Combining Poverty and Mortality : A Survey," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10042, The World Bank.
    8. N. P. Ravindra Deyshappriya & Simon Feeny, 2021. "Weighting the Dimensions of the Multidimensional Poverty Index: Findings from Sri Lanka," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 156(1), pages 1-19, July.
    9. S. Subramanian & Diganta Mukherjee, 2018. "On Intermediate Headcount Indices Of Poverty," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(4), pages 443-451, October.
    10. Hassoun, Nicole & Subramanian, S., 2012. "An aspect of variable population poverty comparisons," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(2), pages 238-241.
    11. Lucio Esposito, 2010. "Upper Boundedness For The Measurement Of Relative Deprivation," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 56(3), pages 632-639, September.
    12. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:9:y:2003:i:2:p:1-10 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Edward Anderson & Lucio Esposito, 2014. "On the joint evaluation of absolute and relative deprivation," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 12(3), pages 411-428, September.
    14. Claudio Zoli, 2009. "Variable population welfare and poverty orderings satisfying replication properties," Working Papers 69/2009, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    15. Diganta Mukherjee, 2008. "Poverty measures incorporating variable rate of alleviation due to population growth," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 31(1), pages 97-107, June.
    16. Lucio Esposito & Francesca Majorano, 2011. "What principles should inform poverty indices? Insights from a cross-country survey," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 41(2), pages 387-420, October.
    17. 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.
    18. Walter Bossert & Susumu Cato & Kohei Kamaga, 2022. "Generalized Poverty-gap Orderings," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 164(1), pages 189-215, November.
    19. Haider A. Khan, 2004. "On Mortality and Poverty: An Axiomatic Approach With A Modified Index," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-281, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    20. Sunil Rajpal & Rockli Kim & Lathan Liou & William Joe & S. V. Subramanian, 2020. "Does the Choice of Metric Matter for Identifying Areas for Policy Priority? An Empirical Assessment Using Child Undernutrition in India," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 152(3), pages 823-841, December.

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    Keywords

    Food Security and Poverty;

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