Discontinuous losses from poverty, generalized P-alpha measures, and optimal transfers to the poor

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bourguignon, F; Fields, G
• 署名单位: Cornell University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/S0047-2727(96)01589-7
• 发表日期: 1997
• 页码: 155-175
• 关键词: poverty index; antipoverty policy

摘要

This paper examines the distributional properties of poverty measures which are discontinuous at the poverty line. It is shown that among all the additive poverty measures, only those measures with some discontinuous jump at the poverty line are such that it is optimal to allocate a given antipoverty budget either to the richest of the poor, or to the poorest of the poor, or to both. A special class of such poverty measures is an extension of the well-known P-alpha, the properties of which are investigated.