Measuring Monetary Poverty in the Middle East and North Africa Region : Data Gaps and Different Options to Address Them

Atamanov, Aziz ; Tandon, Sharad ; Lopez-Acevedo, Gladys ; Vergara Bahena, Mexico Alberto

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: POVERTY MEASUREMENT;    HOUSEHOLD SURVEYS;    HOUSEHOLD BUDGET;    CONSUMPTION;    HOUSEHOLD WELFARE;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-9259
RP-ID  :  WPS9259

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 identifies gaps inavailability, access, and quality of household budgetsurveys in the Middle East and North Africa region used tomeasure monetary poverty and evaluates ways to fill theseinformation gaps. Despite improving public access tohousehold budget surveys, the availability and timeliness ofwelfare data in the Middle East and North Africa region ispoor compared to the rest of the world. Closing the data gaprequires collection of more HBS data in more countries andimproving access to data where it exists. However, whencollection of consumption data is not possible, a variety ofother second-best strategies can be employed. Usingimputation methods can help to measure monetary poverty.Constructing non-monetary poverty and asset indexes fromless robust surveys, using non-traditional surveys such asphone surveys, and "big data" -- administrativerecords, social networks and communications data, andgeospatial data -- can help substitute for, or complementdata from existing traditional survey data.