Opportunity-Sensitive Poverty Measurement

Brunori, Paolo ; Ferreira, Francisco ; Lugo, Maria Ana ; Peragine, Vito

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: ABSOLUTE VALUE;    AGGREGATE POVERTY;    AVERAGE INCOME;    AVERAGE INCOMES;    CHANGES IN POVERTY;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-6728
RP-ID  :  WPS6728

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 offers an axiomaticcharacterization of two classes of poverty measures that aresensitive to inequality of opportunity, one a strict subsetof the other. The proposed indices are sensitive not only toincome shortfalls from the poverty line, but also todifferences in the opportunities faced by people withdifferent predetermined characteristics, such as race orfamily background. Dominance conditions are established foreach class of measures and a sub-family of scalar indices,based on a rank-dependent aggregation of type-specificpoverty levels, is also introduced. In empirical analysisusing household survey data from eighteen European countriesin 2005, substantial differences in country rankings basedon standard Foster-Greer-Thorbecke indices and on the newopportunity-sensitive indices are found. Cross-countrydifferences in opportunity-sensitive poverty are decomposedinto a level effect, a distribution effect, and a populationcomposition effect.