MEASURING POVERTY ACCOUNTING FOR TIME

• Published in: The Review of income and wealth Vol. 58; no. 2; pp. 330 - 354
• Main Authors: Gradin, Carlos, Del Rio, Coral, Canto, Olga
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-06-2012
• Subjects: Accounting; D31; D63; duration; Dynamic models; Empirical research; Equality; Family; I32; Income; Income distribution; Income inequality; intertemporal poverty; Measurement; Methodology; Population; Poverty; poverty measurement; Preferences; Studies; Time series; Wealth; Wealth distribution; Well-being
• ISSN: 0034-6586; 1475-4991
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4991.2011.00458.x

In this paper we make a methodological proposal to measure poverty accounting for time by proposing a new family of intertemporal poverty indexes that aims at reconciling the way poverty is measured in a static and a dynamic framework. Our index is able to consider the duration of the poverty spell and the social preference for equality in well‐being given that, in contrast with others that have been previously proposed, it is sensitive to the level of inequality between individual complete poverty experiences over time. Moreover, other indices in the literature can be interpreted as special cases of our more general measure. An empirical illustration shows the relevance of considering the distribution of poverty experiences among the population in an international analysis.