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Toward Better Global Poverty Measures

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  • Martin Ravallion
Abstract
While much progress has been made over the last 25 years in measuring global poverty, there are a number of challenges ahead. The paper discusses three sets of problems: (i) how to allow for social effects on welfare, recognizing the identification issues involved; (ii) the need to monitor progress in raising the consumption floor above its biological level, in addition to counting the number of people living near the floor; and (iii) addressing the longstanding concerns about prevailing approaches to making inter-country comparisons of price levels facing poor people. Some suggestions are offered for operational solutions, building on past research.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Ravallion, 2015. "Toward Better Global Poverty Measures," Working Papers id:7753, eSocialSciences.
    • Handle: RePEc:ess:wpaper:id:7753
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    Cited by:

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    2. Clément Carbonnier, 2022. "From the Main Determinants of Self‐Declared Minimum Income to the Measure of Sub‐National Purchasing Power Parity," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 68(3), pages 738-769, September.
    3. Ingvild Almås & Timothy K.M. Beatty & Thomas F. Crossley, 2018. "Lost in Translation: What do Engel Curves Tell us about the Cost of Living?," CESifo Working Paper Series 6886, CESifo.
    4. Richard Bluhm & Denis de Crombrugghe & Adam Szirmai, 2016. "Poverty Accounting. A fractional response approach to poverty decomposition," Working Papers 413, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    5. John Gibson, 2016. "Poverty Measurement: We Know Less than Policy Makers Realize," Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 3(3), pages 430-442, September.
    6. Ravi Kanbur, 2021. "Sustainable Development Goals and the Study of Economic Inequality," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 19(1), pages 3-11, March.
    7. Ranjan Ray, 2017. "The Role of Prices in Welfare Comparisons: Methodological Developments and a Selective Survey of the Empirical Literature," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 93(301), pages 314-332, June.
    8. Dean Jolliffe & Espen Beer Prydz, 2016. "Estimating international poverty lines from comparable national thresholds," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 14(2), pages 185-198, June.
    9. Arief Anshory Yusuf & Andy Sumner, 2017. "Multidimensional poverty in Indonesia: How inclusive has economic growth been?," Departmental Working Papers 2017-09, The Australian National University, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics.
    10. Amani Kahloul & Rim Lahmandi‐Ayed & Hejer Lasram, 2019. "Poverty, competition, democracy, and ownership: A general equilibrium model with vertical preferences," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 21(6), pages 1143-1178, December.
    11. Gregorio Izquierdo Llanes & Antonio Salcedo Galiano, 2023. "Why does equivalization matter? An application to the monetary poverty in the sustainable development goals framework," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 57(3), pages 2575-2589, June.
    12. Kerner, Andrew & Crabtree, Charles, 2018. "The Political Economy of Data Production," SocArXiv qsxae, Center for Open Science.
    13. Ravallion, Martin & Chen, Shaohua, 2019. "Global poverty measurement when relative income matters," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 1-1.
    14. Fahd Rehman & Russel J. Cooper, 2023. "Effective GDP: A Cross‐Country Comparison," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(3), pages 619-652, March.
    15. Amita Majumder & Ranjan Ray & Sattwik Santra, 2016. "Global and Country Poverty Rates, Welfare Rankings of the Regions and Purchasing Power Parities: How Robust Are the Results?," Monash Economics Working Papers 11-16, Monash University, Department of Economics.
    16. Michail Moatsos & Achillefs Lazopoulos, 2024. "Stress-testing the international poverty line and the official global poverty statistics," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-12, December.

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