Publication: Constructing Robust Poverty Trends in the Islamic Republic of Iran, 2008-14
Loading...
Published
2016-09
ISSN
Date
2016-10-13
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This paper constructs and tests the robustness of consistently measured poverty trends in the Islamic Republic of Iran after 2008, using international poverty lines based on U.S. dollars at 2011 purchasing power parity. The constructed estimates reveal three distinct periods of welfare in the Islamic Republic of Iran: increase in poverty and inequality between 2008 and 2009, decline in poverty and inequality between 2009 and 2012, and gradual deterioration of both indicators again after 2012. The results are robust regardless of the choice of welfare aggregate, inclusion or exclusion of different components, and spatial adjustment accounting for regional variation in food and housing prices.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Mostafavi, Mohammad-Hadi; Atamanov, Aziz; Salehi-Isfahani, Djavad; Vishwanath, Tara. 2016. Constructing Robust Poverty Trends in the Islamic Republic of Iran, 2008-14. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 7836. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25152 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication Global Poverty Revisited Using 2021 PPPs and New Data on Consumption(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-05)Recent improvements in survey methodologies have increased measured consumption in many low- and lower-middle-income countries that now collect a more comprehensive measure of household consumption. Faced with such methodological changes, countries have frequently revised upward their national poverty lines to make them appropriate for the new measures of consumption. This in turn affects the World Bank’s global poverty lines when they are periodically revised. The international poverty line, which is based on the typical poverty line in low-income countries, increases by around 40 percent to $3.00 when the more recent national poverty lines as well as the 2021 purchasing power parities are incorporated. The net impact of the changes in international prices, the poverty line, and new survey data (including new data for India) is an increase in global extreme poverty by some 125 million people in 2022, and a significant shift of poverty away from South Asia and toward Sub-Saharan Africa. The changes at higher poverty lines, which are more relevant to middle-income countries, are mixed.Publication The Economic Value of Weather Forecasts: A Quantitative Systematic Literature Review(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-09-10)This study systematically reviews the literature that quantifies the economic benefits of weather observations and forecasts in four weather-dependent economic sectors: agriculture, energy, transport, and disaster-risk management. The review covers 175 peer-reviewed journal articles and 15 policy reports. Findings show that the literature is concentrated in high-income countries and most studies use theoretical models, followed by observational and then experimental research designs. Forecast horizons studied, meteorological variables and services, and monetization techniques vary markedly by sector. Estimated benefits even within specific subsectors span several orders of magnitude and broad uncertainty ranges. An econometric meta-analysis suggests that theoretical studies and studies in richer countries tend to report significantly larger values. Barriers that hinder value realization are identified on both the provider and user sides, with inadequate relevance, weak dissemination, and limited ability to act recurring across sectors. Policy reports rely heavily on back-of-the-envelope or recursive benefit-transfer estimates, rather than on the methods and results of the peer-reviewed literature, revealing a science-to-policy gap. These findings suggest substantial socioeconomic potential of hydrometeorological services around the world, but also knowledge gaps that require more valuation studies focusing on low- and middle-income countries, addressing provider- and user-side barriers and employing rigorous empirical valuation methods to complement and validate theoretical models.Publication The Marshall Plan: Then and Now(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-10-14)This paper is a product of the Development Policy Team, Development Economics. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://www.worldbank.org/prwp.Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication Geopolitical Risks and Trade(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-09-23)This paper studies the impact of geopolitical risks on international trade, using the Geopolitical Risk (GPR) index of Caldara and Iacoviello (2022) and an empirical gravity model. The impact of spikes in geopolitical risk on trade is negative, strong, and heterogeneous across sectors. The findings show that increases in geopolitical risk reduce trade by about 30 to 40 percent. These effects are equivalent to an increase of global tariffs of up to 14 percent. Services trade is most vulnerable to geopolitical risks, followed by agriculture, and the impact on manufacturing trade is moderate. These negative effects are partially mitigated by cultural and geographic proximity, as well as by the presence of trade agreements.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Welfare and Distributional Impacts of Inflation and the COVID-19 Outbreak in the Islamic Republic of Iran(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-03)This paper simulates the welfare and poverty impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Islamic Republic of Iran, emphasizing the role of inflation, which lowered the purchasing power of households and had heterogeneous impacts across the distribution and in different regions of the country. First, income losses are estimated with a microsimulation analysis based on shock scenarios. Second, combining data on price changes with expenditure baskets for various groups of households, group-specific price indices are calculated. These are then applied to the post-shock income changes to assess the deterioration of living standards associated with inflation. Poverty substantially increases, by up to 21 percentage points, as a combined result of the fall in household incomes and high inflation through the pandemic. Iranians in the bottom half of the welfare distribution, those working in services and high-contact economic sectors, and those in rural areas are disproportionately affected.Publication Welfare and Fiscal Implications from Increased Gasoline Prices in the Islamic Republic of Iran(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-05)Facing a fiscal crisis, the Islamic Republic of Iran decided to increase gasoline prices at the end of 2019. This paper estimates the impact of the price increase on household welfare and government revenue, using the most recent Household Expenditure and Income Survey conducted by the Statistical Center of Iran in March 2018-March 2019. The paper looks at the direct and indirect impacts of the reform and quantifies the compensatory cash transfer program the government instituted. Despite very regressive gasoline subsidies benefitting the rich the most, the increase in gasoline prices is found to affect the poor to a greater extent due to larger negative indirect impacts as well as their relatively low incomes. In total, poverty is estimated to increase by about 2.9 percentage points, with the direct impact accounting for a third of this increase. The proposed government scheme, if targeted perfectly to the poorest 18 million households, would fully compensate the poorest bottom 50 percent of the population and reduce poverty to below pre-reform levels. The annual cost of the program will be around 338 trillion rials, which accounts for 77 percent of the estimated total savings from the subsidies reform (439 trillion rials).Publication Robustness of Shared Prosperity Estimates(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-03)This paper is the first to systematically test the robustness of shared prosperity estimates to different methodological choices using a sample of countries from all regions in the world. The tests that are conducted include grouped versus microdata, nominal welfare aggregate versus adjustment for spatial price variation, and different treatment of income with negative and zero values. The empirical results reveal an only minimal impact of the proposed tests on shared prosperity estimates. Nevertheless, there are important caveats. First, spatial adjustment can change the ranking of households, affecting the distribution of the population in the bottom 40 percent. Second, the negligible impact of spatial deflation holds only if price adjustments are carried out consistently over time. Finally, the treatment of negative and zero income numbers can potentially lead to substantial differences in shared prosperity, depending on the magnitude of negative income and the share of households with negative and zero numbers across years.Publication June 2025 Update to the Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP)(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-11)The June 2025 update to the Poverty and Inequality Platform (PIP) introduces several important changes to the data underlying the global poverty estimates. The most important change is the adoption of the 2021 Purchasing Power Parities (PPPs). In addition, new data for India has been incorporated and the existing series adjusted for comparability. This document details the changes to underlying data and the methodological reasons behind them. Depending on the availability of recent survey data, global and regional poverty estimates are reported up to 2023, together with nowcasts up to 2025. The PIP database now includes 74 new country-years, bringing the total number of surveys to over 2,400, for 172 economies.Publication Islamic Republic of Iran - Health Sector Review : Volume 2. Background Sections(Washington, DC, 2008-06)The Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has stated its commitment to improving the health and nutritional status of the population as articulated in the Interim Country Assistance Strategy (CAS), which lists as priorities addressing nutritional deficiencies, expanding coverage of basic health services, and improving efficiency of the health system and the quality of service at all levels. This health sector review is consistent with this in that it provides the platform and evidence base for such reform. It is also in-line with part three of the current Fourth Five-Year Plan, which includes health development, human security and social justice priority, the reduction of illness from malnutrition, increasing public health service coverage, and increasing access to quality health services while reducing the financial burden on the families. The objective of this study is to provide a comprehensive review and diagnostic of the performance of the health sector in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The government is quite advanced in the type of analysis it already undertakes on various aspects of the sector (e.g., burden of diseases, national health accounts, and utilization analysis). However, a consolidation of this information and analysis that encompasses several major elements of the health sector has not been done recently. The health sector review, through a synthesis of available data and other information on the health sector attempts to: (i) assess the strengths, challenges, and opportunities facing the current health system; (ii) offer analytic assessments of the health policies and plans; and (iii) provide a framework for developing strategic options as well as short- and medium-term recommendations and action plans to achieve the goals identified in the country's Fourth Five-Year Plan. The review is also intended to provide a platform for discussions on possible areas of collaboration between the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the World Bank on the health sector.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication World Development Report 2006(Washington, DC, 2005)This year’s Word Development Report (WDR), the twenty-eighth, looks at the role of equity in the development process. It defines equity in terms of two basic principles. The first is equal opportunities: that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by pre-determined circumstances such as race, gender, social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health, education and consumption levels. This principle thus includes the objective of poverty reduction. The report’s main message is that, in the long run, the pursuit of equity and the pursuit of economic prosperity are complementary. In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Development Indicators 2005‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Morocco Economic Update, Winter 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-04-03)Despite the drought causing a modest deceleration of overall GDP growth to 3.2 percent, the Moroccan economy has exhibited some encouraging trends in 2024. Non-agricultural growth has accelerated to an estimated 3.8 percent, driven by a revitalized industrial sector and a rebound in gross capital formation. Inflation has dropped below 1 percent, allowing Bank al-Maghrib to begin easing its monetary policy. While rural labor markets remain depressed, the economy has added close to 162,000 jobs in urban areas. Morocco’s external position remains strong overall, with a moderate current account deficit largely financed by growing foreign direct investment inflows, underpinned by solid investor confidence indicators. Despite significant spending pressures, the debt-to-GDP ratio is slowly declining.Publication Argentina Country Climate and Development Report(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11)The Argentina Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) explores opportunities and identifies trade-offs for aligning Argentina’s growth and poverty reduction policies with its commitments on, and its ability to withstand, climate change. It assesses how the country can: reduce its vulnerability to climate shocks through targeted public and private investments and adequation of social protection. The report also shows how Argentina can seize the benefits of a global decarbonization path to sustain a more robust economic growth through further development of Argentina’s potential for renewable energy, energy efficiency actions, the lithium value chain, as well as climate-smart agriculture (and land use) options. Given Argentina’s context, this CCDR focuses on win-win policies and investments, which have large co-benefits or can contribute to raising the country’s growth while helping to adapt the economy, also considering how human capital actions can accompany a just transition.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.