Reference Groups and the Poverty Line: An Axiomatic Approach with an Empirical Illustration

From:
Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Published
1 January 2015
Country:
India and China
Document Type:
Working Paper
Theme:
Economic Growth
First published:
1 January 2015
Authors:
Chakravarty, S.R., Chattopadhyay, N., Nissanov, Z. and Silber, J.

Abstract

A recent trend in the study of poverty is to consider a relative poverty line, one that is responsive to the nature of the income distribution. We develop an axiomatic approach to the determination of an amalgam poverty line. Given a reference income (e.g. the mean or the median), the amalgam poverty line becomes a weighted average of the absolute poverty line and the reference income, where the weights depend on the policy maker바카라 사이트™s preferences for aggregating the two components. The paper ends with an empirical illustration comparing rural and urban areas in the People바카라 사이트™s Republic of China and India.

Citation

Chakravarty, S.R.; Chattopadhyay, N.; Nissanov, Z.; Silber, J. Reference Groups and the Poverty Line: An Axiomatic Approach with an Empirical Illustration. UNU-WIDER, Helsinki, Finland (2015) 24 pp. [WIDER Working Paper No. 2015/002]

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Published 1 January 2015
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