Publication: Estimating Poverty with Panel Data, Comparably: An Example from Jordan
Date
2015-07
ISSN
Published
2015-07
Author(s)
Abstract
Poverty estimates based on enumeration
from a single point in time form the cornerstone for much of
the literature on poverty. Households are typically
interviewed once about their consumption or income, and
their wellbeing is assessed from their responses. Global
estimates of poverty that aggregate poverty counts from all
countries implicitly assume that the counts are comparable.
This paper illustrates that this assumption of comparability
is potentially invalid when households are interviewed
multiple times with repeat visits throughout the year. The
paper provides an example from Jordan, where the
internationally comparable approach of handling the data
from repeat visits yields a poverty rate that is 26 percent
greater than the rate that is currently reported as the
official estimate. The paper also explores alternative
definitions of poverty, informed in part by the
psychological and biophysical literature on the long-run
effects of short-term exposure to poverty or generally
adverse environments. This alternative concept of poverty
suggests that the prevalence of those who have been affected
by poverty in Jordan during 2010 is more than twice as large
as the official 2010 estimate of poverty.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Jolliffe, Dean; Serajuddin, Umar. 2015. Estimating Poverty with Panel Data, Comparably: An Example from Jordan. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 7373. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/22457 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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