Endogenous weights and multidimensional poverty: A cautionary tale

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Dutta, Indranil; Nogales, Ricardo; Yalonetzky, Gaston
• 署名单位: University of Manchester; University of Oxford; University of Leeds
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2021.102649
• 发表日期: 2021
• 关键词: Multidimensional poverty; Endogenous weights; Measurement externalities; PCA weights; Frequency weights

摘要

Multidimensional poverty measures have become a standard feature in poverty assessments. A large and growing body of work uses endogenous (data driven) weights to compute multidimensional poverty. We demonstrate that broad classes of endogenous weights violate key properties of poverty indices such as monotonicity and subgroup consistency, without which poverty evaluation and policy targeting are seriously compromised. Using data from Ecuador and Uganda we show that these violations are widespread. Our results can be extended to other composite welfare measures such as the widely used asset indices.