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Global Poverty: National Accounts Based versus Survey Based Estimates
Author(s) -
Karshenas Massoud
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
development and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.267
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1467-7660
pISSN - 0012-155X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-7660.00324
Subject(s) - poverty , national accounts , consistency (knowledge bases) , liberian dollar , economics , consumption (sociology) , survey data collection , estimation , national income and product accounts , divergence (linguistics) , measures of national income and output , econometrics , development economics , economic growth , macroeconomics , statistics , sociology , mathematics , social science , finance , linguistics , philosophy , geometry , management
Abstract This article examines the dollar‐a‐day poverty estimates produced by the World Bank. It highlights the lack of consistency between average consumption and income in household surveys and national accounts data. After examining the likely sources of divergence between the two series, the author proposes a new method of estimation of poverty, based on calibrating the survey means by conditioning on national accounts aggregates. The new poverty estimates, which are consistent with national accounts data, are contrasted with the World Bank estimates. The implications of the findings for the debate on the relationship between poverty and economic growth are also briefly discussed.