Who Escaped Poverty and Who Was Left Behind? : A Non-Parametric Approach to Explore Welfare Dynamics Using Cross-Sections

Lucchetti, Leonardo

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: POVERTY;    WELFARE DYNAMICS;    POVERTY TRANSITIONS;    SYNTHETIC PANEL;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-8220
RP-ID  :  WPS8220

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 proposes a non-parametricadaptation of a recently developed parametric technique toproduce point estimates of intra-generational economicmobility in the absence of panel data sets that followindividuals over time. The method predicts past individualincome or consumption using time-invariant observablecharacteristics, which allows the estimation of mobilityinto and out of poverty, as well as household-level incomeor consumption growth, from cross-sectional data. The papervalidates this method by sampling repeated cross-sectionsout of actual panel data sets from three countries in theLatin America region and comparing the technique withmobility from panels. Overall, the method performs well inthe three settings; with few exceptions, all estimates fallwithin the 95 percent confidence intervals of the panelmobility. The quality of the estimates does not depend ingeneral on the sophistication level of the underlyingwelfare model's specifications. The results areencouraging even for those specifications that include fewtime-invariant variables as regressors.