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International Poverty Comparisons on Unit Record Data of Developing and Developed Countries[Note 1. The research for this paper was funded by an ...]
Author(s) -
Lancaster Geoffrey,
Ray Ranjan
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
australian economic papers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.351
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1467-8454
pISSN - 0004-900X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8454.00154
Subject(s) - poverty , per capita , economics , developing country , equivalence (formal languages) , demographic economics , unit (ring theory) , development economics , economic growth , population , demography , sociology , linguistics , philosophy , mathematics education , mathematics
Cross country poverty comparisons on unit records have, rarely, involved both developing and developed countries. The present study attempts to fill this gap by comparing poverty across fourteen nations with diverse economic and demographic characteristics and at vastly different stages of economic development. The study contains evidence on (a) cross country variation in the equivalence scales estimated in the presence of both household size economies and adult/child relativities, (b) impact of demographic adjustment of the poverty line, that incorporate household size and composition changes, on the poverty rates, and (c) sensitivity of the poverty estimates and their rankings to the ‘equivalence elasticity’. The study finds that country rankings based on per capita GNP bear very little resemblance with that based on the aggregate poverty rates. The latter hide substantial variation in the poverty estimates across different household types.