Publication: Poverty-Specific Purchasing Power Parities in Africa
Date
2017-07
ISSN
Published
2017-07
Author(s)
Dikhanov, Yuri
Hamadeh, Nada
Vigil-Oliver, William
Degefu, Tefera B.
Song, Inyoung
Abstract
The paper revisits the issue of
poverty-specific purchasing power parities (PPPs), using the
most recent (2011) International Comparison Program (ICP)
results. The World Bank's global poverty count uses a
common international poverty line -- currently $1.90 at 2011
international prices—based on the ICP PPPs for consumption.
The use of these PPPs is often criticized for two reasons.
First, the ICP PPPs are based on patterns of aggregate
household consumption, not the consumption of the poor.
Second, the basket of goods and services used for collecting
prices for the ICP is not poverty specific. On the first
issue, using data from 28 African countries, the paper
concludes that the poverty-specific PPPs estimated with
household expenditure survey weights are very similar to the
ICP PPPs. On the second issue, poverty-specific PPPs were
estimated after removing items deemed to be irrelevant for
the poor. The overall effect of removing these items from
consumption PPPs is shown to be negligible.
Citation
“Dikhanov, Yuri; Hamadeh, Nada; Vigil-Oliver, William; Degefu, Tefera B.; Song, Inyoung. 2017. Poverty-Specific Purchasing Power Parities in Africa. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8150. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27956 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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