Publication: Opportunity-Sensitive Poverty Measurement
Date
2013-12
ISSN
Published
2013-12
Author(s)
Abstract
This paper offers an axiomatic
characterization of two classes of poverty measures that are
sensitive to inequality of opportunity, one a strict subset
of the other. The proposed indices are sensitive not only to
income shortfalls from the poverty line, but also to
differences in the opportunities faced by people with
different predetermined characteristics, such as race or
family background. Dominance conditions are established for
each class of measures and a sub-family of scalar indices,
based on a rank-dependent aggregation of type-specific
poverty levels, is also introduced. In empirical analysis
using household survey data from eighteen European countries
in 2005, substantial differences in country rankings based
on standard Foster-Greer-Thorbecke indices and on the new
opportunity-sensitive indices are found. Cross-country
differences in opportunity-sensitive poverty are decomposed
into a level effect, a distribution effect, and a population
composition effect.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Brunori, Paolo; Ferreira, Francisco; Lugo, Maria Ana; Peragine, Vito. 2013. Opportunity-Sensitive Poverty Measurement. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 6728. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/16944 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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