Measuring Poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean : Methodological Considerations When Estimating an Empirical Regional Poverty Line

Castaneda, R. Andres ; Gasparini, Leonardo ; Garriga, Santiago ; Lucchetti, Leonardo R. ; Valderrama, Daniel

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: REGIONAL POVERTY LINES;    HOUSEHOLD INCOMES;    HEADCOUNT RATIO;    HOUSEHOLD SURVEY;    CAPITA INCOME;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7621
RP-ID  :  WPS7621

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper contributes to themethodological literature on the estimation of poverty linesfor country poverty comparisons in Latin America and theCaribbean. The paper exploits a unique, comprehensive dataset of 86 up-to-date urban official extreme and moderatepoverty lines across 18 countries in Latin America and theCaribbean, as well as the recent values of the nationalpurchasing power parity conversion factors from the 2011International Comparison Program and a set of harmonizedhousehold surveys that are part of the Socio-EconomicDatabase for Latin America and the Caribbean project.Because of the dispersion of country-specific poverty lines,the paper concludes that the value of a regional povertyline largely depends on the selected aggregation method,which ends up having a direct impact on the estimation ofregional extreme and moderate poverty headcounts.