Why not consider that being absolutely poor is worse than being only relatively poor?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Decerf, Benoit
• 署名单位: University of Namur
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2017.06.003
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 79-92
• 关键词: Income poverty measure; Relative poverty; Absolute poverty; Unequal growth

摘要

No current strategy to measure income poverty is able to (i) account for both its absolute and relative aspects and (ii) always consider that an individual who is absolutely poor is poorer than another individual who is only relatively poor. I propose a measure of income poverty satisfying (i) and (ii). Unlike alternative proposals satisfying (i), a decrease in a poor individual's income never reduces this measure. An application illustrates that the measure yields intuitive judgments about unequal growth experiences, for which all absolute (resp. relative) poverty measures systematically conclude that poverty has decreased (resp. increased). (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.