Poverty Analysis - Science topic

If 'othering' is treating people as different / outside the 'norm' then the opposite might be 'normative acceptance'.

As in - 'the othering of group is compared to the normative acceptance of group b'.

Dear Prof. Masood Ahmed!

You pointed to an essential problem - the need for brand new datasets on the socio- economic factors impacting countries during this ongoing pandemic:

1) Anser, M.K., Yousaf, S.U., Hyder, S. et al. Socio-economic and corporate factors and COVID-19 pandemic: a wake-up call. Environ Sci Pollut Res (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15275-6 Free access:

2) Anser, M.K., Khan, M.A., Zaman, K. et al. Financial development during COVID-19 pandemic: the role of coronavirus testing and functional labs. Financ Innov 7, 9 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40854-021-00226-4 Open access:

Yours sincerely, Bulcsu Szekely

I think that the consumption pattern is considered somewhat a measure or an indicator of the pattern of income distribution, and this may give an indication somewhat of the level of poverty or disparity in the distribution of income, if you will

It will be difficult for India to overcome this crisis, even if the number of total confirmed cases remains moderate as compared to other countries in the region and worldwide:

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports.

The main priority should remain the vulnerable and their specific needs.

Among the most severely affected are the migrant workers (whose number is estimated at over 100 million and who fall largely in the informal labor force category), the rural population and the homeless. In the long run, India should invest more in the healthcare system and tackle specific issues.

TTS system is almost fully flopped now. People working on TTS are not given any incentives and pay is never revised for over last 4-5 years. The differenece in pay of BBS and TTS is marginal. BPS system has attraction of pension which job security which TTS faculty can't think of. People who really perform on TTS system, HEC has no idea that how to give them incentives. All performers and non performers are treated equally. So, the purpose of TTS to promote research and all this is dead now. Also, it's common practice now to victimise TTS faculty in many Universities.

poverty represent the main challenge for education and developing intellectual capital

Since Gini Coefficient is a standardized index of inequality, it is reasonably comparable and can be adopted for your inquiry. The World Bank indicators are easily accessible from World Bank data (www,worldbank.org)

there are different livelihood appraoches (UNDP, Oxfam, DFID), which differ slightly from each other. They are all suitable to design a research project. Best is to define indicators to measure the different livelihood capitals.....

i am also doing the same research and searching the same theories. would you share your experience to me?

for some background information the following literature is very usefull:

James Foster; Joel Greer; Erik Thorbecke The Foster–Greer–Thorbecke (FGT) poverty measures: 25 years later Springer-Verlag The Journal of Economic Inequality Year:2010 Month:12 Day: Volume:8 Issue:4 First page:491 Last page:524

Udo Ebert; Patrick Moyes A Simple Axiomatization of the Foster, Greer and Thorbecke Poverty Orderings Wiley Blackwell (Blackwell Publishing) Journal of Public Economic Theory Year:2002 Month: Day: Volume:4 Issue:4 First page:455 Last page:473

ames Foster, Joel Greer and Erik Thorbecke A Class of Decomposable Poverty Measures JSTOR Econometrica Year:1984 Month:05 Day: Volume:52 Issue:3 First page:761 Last page:766

Mishra, Udaya S.; Mishra, Rudra Narayan On comparison of nutritional deprivation: an illustration using Foster Greer Thorbecke criterion Informa UK (Taylor & Francis) Applied Economics Letters Year:2009 Month:06 Day:23 Volume:16 Issue:10 First page:1021 Last page:1024

Thank you all very much for your helpful replies. I understand that I didn't give many details. I have now added an update which contains a file showing the potential layout of the index.

The index is based on a principal component analysis of all the indicators and will be calculated for 3 age groups because we assume that not all indicators are relevant for all age groups. The distribution by sex is not really a problem because we only anticipate differences in the health domain.

My question about standardisation is due to a practice in the public health field: when populations have quite different demographic profiles (some regions having much higher proportions of children or older persons than others) the measures of health outcomes (such as mortality rates, cancer rates, etc.) cannot be compared directly with each other due to underlying population structures affecting those outcomes. Usually, in epidemiology and public health, a population structure of a reference population (or simply the mean population structure of all regions) is attributed to regional populations and only then those health measures are calculated. Traditionally, the index is calculated for each of Quebec's 18 sociosanitary regions and standardisation had been applied to make health measures comparable. However, this new index includes mainly socio-demographic indicators for which age and sex are important stratifiers. In my opinion, it is important to keep the effects of age and sex visible when regions are compared because they help explain observed deprivation. Standardisation would give the regions artificial population structures and thus potentially under- or overestimate deprivation. I haven't found any work about standardisation in socio-demographic indicators (such as unemployment rates or educational attainment). Are you aware of such practice?

Hi, Matthew,

I would refer you to two books that add to this conversation. The first, Acemoglu and Robinson's What Nations Fail provides a strong historical case for the conditions for economic growth: (a) shared political power that generates stability, (b) institutions that motivate people to participate in the economy, and (c) substantive property rights that support saving, investing, and innovating. I do believe that Acemoglu and Robinson under-estimate the role that capital accumulation plays in development and especially the role that slavery and colonization played in capital accumulation, but their arguments do need to be heard.

Secondly, I refer you to Zizek's Trouble in Paradise, which attempts to decouple democracy and capitalism. In his view, capitalism with it's unbalanced preference for capital over labor is in many ways the antithesis of democracy and the equality it presumes.

Taken together, I suggest that the answer might be that the only force that can redistribute national wealth in a way that promotes egalitarian economic advance is a mass movement of the people that redistributes political power first, then economic. Of course, this is highly problematic. As Zizek rightly observes, it is easy for the masses to come together to overthrow a tyrant, but another thing altogether to resist the temptation to appropriate the tyrant's wealth-hoarding for a new elite once the fissures in the masses have reasserted themselves.

Capitalism does indeed create wealth. The creation of wealth creates powerful elites. It is an ongoing challenge for the disempowered masses to unite in a meaningful way to achieve an egalitarian society. Zizek wants socialism (I think). Acemoglu and Robinson want more creative destruction and unfettered entrepreneurialism. I think I would prefer human rights to trump property rights.

Let's denote the percentage changes in house prices as r. Next define two variables:

r+ = max(r,0)

r- = min(r,0)

Now, instead of running regression divorce = a + b*r, run the following regression:

divorce = a + b1*(r+) + b1*(r-)

Thank you Mr Ahmad, Yes i had already checked, Worldbank and other well known resources but the problem is that, they provides data only for few years for some countries, more specifically Asian countries. I already collected some data from worldbank but a lot of missing periods were found there.

Well, the best sources for comparative international data are the World Bank (data.worldbank.org) and UN Data (data.un.org). The Google Public Data Explorer (https://www.google.com/publicdata) has some data from Eurostat and OECD. Yes, its true there is missing data and to a certain extent you can interpolate, but that still leaves a great deal of missing data. I doubt that you will find anything more comprehensive. There is an inequality adjusted Human Development Index, but not for your time period. I'll link to some articles about other inequality measures--but You probably won't have the raw data.

I have worked a lot about this question when doing a researchfield in Mozambique. You can find our achievements on the paper "Architects first hand. An experience in Mozambique". Please follow the link below.

I would suggest either the IMF or World Bank websites.  You might have to spend some time sifting through the various options for GDP by Sector or GDP by Industry.

Hi, Paul.

Please check whether this can be helpful

National Health and Morbidity Survey

Global Ageing Study (GLAS), 2007

Malaysian Population and Family Survey

National Medical Care Survey (NMCS) 2010

East Asia Retirement Survey

The Mental Health and Quality of Life of Older Malaysians Survey

Philippine Elderly Survey (PES)

Philippine Longitudinal Survey on Aging (PLSOA)

Best,

Mamta

Thanks Hasret, I'll have a look.

R.

Out of sample estimation is based on modeling the year to year change and extrapolation based on that model. One should be cautious when using such models since often, they do not capture reality very well. it would be better to obtain the data from other sources if available for recent years.

I suggest you look at the National Sample Surveys (NSS) of India undertaken each 5 years. Look under Planning Commission also.

Regards,

Gordon.

Hello Robin Thank you. The debate helps me a lot. A special thanks to Anirudh as well. 

Let me comment what´s going in my country. NGOs are the main institution representing social entrepreneurship and recognized by the government officially. There are a lot of people trying to help the poorest one personally with community development initiative, but the most common pass by the churches (a form of NGO), foundation created by institution with commercial purpose (This one can be seen as a form of corporate social responsibility). Studies talk about more than 10000 NGO in Haiti (Pierre Ezer Pélissier, 2013: Université d’Ottawa). Hearing the debates, seeing the country, the situation of the country remain the same or get worse. Haiti looks like a big challenge for NGO, donors, the international community as whole.

Following, Dees (1998): “social entrepreneurs attack the underlying causes of problems, rather than simply treating symptoms”. This is not the case for many non-profits organizations in this country. A clear example is their intervention after the 2010 earthquake. Many people were living in the capital at the given time, when this bad event happened, they return to their communities. But, the international aid arrived at the capital, in order to receive it, they do back to the same city (accepting the bad living condition). Until today, most of the intervention of the NGO is centered in the capital. Yes, we can talk about the failure of this form of social entrepreneurship because it doesn´t care for the root of the social problems.

Social entrepreneurs appear as promising solution to social problems, so claim Sud et al. (2008), “society tends to view ‘‘new’’ solutions as ‘‘the’’ solution”; we are almost all losing in the SE as solution (scholars, practitioners), but less is written or analyzed about its darkside, failure, poverty penalty. I think the solution is in people themselves, in their institution; as this give place to talk about social and solidarity economy. What is needed is to make investigation and action to see the enterprises of this sector (social or voluntary) making what social entrepreneurs pretend to do. Obviously, in the actions, we must give them opportunities, financial resources to execute their projects as we do for the SEs.

I strongly recommend you to read the work of Martin Ravallion. He is the world's leading researcher on the measurement of poverty in less developed and developing countries. His ground-breaking research has allowed the definition of precisely calculated poverty lines that are comparable across countries. His work has also contributed to understanding the causes and solutions of poverty, including relationship between economic growth and poverty alleviation. It would be very interesting to see if the results obtained through data mining technique are aligned with the findings of Ravallion.

Hi Michael,

I found the Multi-dimensional Poverty Index (MPI), developed by Alkire and Santos (2010) very useful.

Good luck, Kees

A number of factors or situations come into play here. One, the level of poverty. We wouldn't want to talk about severe destitution here where a poor person has to live under a bridge or makeshift "tent". No chance. There's not much of expectation from them. But if you talk about those categorised as in relative poverty that live in a house with TVs, proper kitchen, etc. then the answer to the question is positively yes. This group of people are those who still have access to proper education and skills training.Therefore, factor number two, accessibility to education and training through initiatives undertaken by welfare agencies may still give the chances for a person to access programmes in creativity education and training. Three, vulnerability is also a form of poverty. There are many examples of communities or even nations (and therefore its people) that have become stronger and more resilient, creative and innovative and excelled out of the necessity and urgency to escape themselves out of those vulnerabilities.

Thanks to you both - you have given me multiple ways to think about "material hardship," which is what I was needing.

Any distribution (even discrete, like income of 10%, 20%, ...90%) is always more informative than functional - one number. If we compare functionals (mapping of distribution into 1 number), I would prefer the ratio of income of top 10% to bottom 10%(let us name it T10/B10). In your case (Palma) bottom 10% are replaced by bottom 40%; let us name it T10/B40. Is this measure better or not, depends on country. Some countries with social protection (like Austria) have relatively few poor, and then it is important to know how poor are those 10%. In 1970s there was a study of T10/B10: in the USSR it was about 3, while in UK only 4, and in the USA only 6. That was a period of high social equality globally. After 1990 it has risen in Russia to 15, and in US it grew in 2013 to 18.8 (with Gini only 0.4), and well above in Latin America. Data about different countries in 2012 are given here: http://www.oecd.org/social/income-distribution-database.htm Now OECD average is 9.6, the lowest inequality (5.2) is in Denmark, the highest among given countries (30.5) is in Mexico. For the same country set Gini ranges only between 0.25 and 0.50.

If we would use Gini, the difference is much less informative: Gini=0.4 is already for high T10/B10>10, while Gini=0.3 corresponds to much higher equality like 6-7. Palma will give less sharp values than T10/B10 (unless bottom 40% are equally poor). But it might be good indicator for some African countries, where quite often bottom 50% live on $2 per day.

It is also important to track what fraction is hold by top 1%, because the main global dynamics today is in wealth movement from middle class to top 1%.

Zakat should be analyzed as important element in national social protection systems in the countries in questions. It supplements public social protection may substitute it if public systems are deficient. But at the same time its social and economic effects and impacts, including impacts on poverty reduction should be regularly monitored by the society and recommendations how to make it function better developed.

Try slavery.  seriously.  Why buy the milk if you own the cow

As you have 4 equations, I assume that you have for endogenous variables. Get the reduced form equations and take derivative wrt variable of interest. That will give you the marginal effect. If you are looking for the value of marginal effect use:

You can also use some other option such as at mean.

I don't know the actual goals your search, but you can compare the unit labor cost, which can be defined ratio between monetary wages (w) and labor productivity (GDP at current prices/N). So you can remove statistical distortions arising from different cost of living in different countries (money wages have in fact a relationship with GDP at current prices). Morover, the unit labor costs dynamycs is an excellent indicator of a country commodity competitiveness. The critical issue of this indicator is that in countries where labor compensation is not through monetary wages (if not partially, for example in Sub-Saharan Africa), unit labor cost cannot be easily calculated. And sorry for my english!

Robert, I take up similar issues not in my research but in my teaching, and I have found useful the work of Rhacel Salazar Parreñas on female migrant labor (Children of Global Migration, Intimate Labors (on care work), Asian Diasporas (edited volume), in addition to the following:

Andersen, Michelle J. . (1993). A License to Abuse: The impact of Conditional Status on Female Immigrants [The Yale Law Journal, 102(6).

Bonacich, Edna, Alimahomed, Sabrina, & Wilson, Jake B. (2008). The racialization of global labor. American Behavioral Scientist, 52(3), 342-355.

A little dated, but articles in: Barbara Ehrenreich & Arlie Russell Hochschild (Eds.) (2002) Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy. New York: Henry Holt and Company.   

Regards:

Food security (and therefore also food insecurity) itself is a multidimensional issue, which cannot be adequately recorded by a single indicator. Some indicators to measure food security at the national level are: % of rural population (access), consumer price index (access), import dependency ratio (stability), food supply or kcal/capita/day (availability), prevalence of undernourishment (utilization), and unemployment rate (access). But none of these indicators ensure that food reaches everyone; and less if there are no public policies that support the equitable distribution of resources, including food. At the community, household and individual levels (most relevant to public health approaches to food security) are important to consider indicators such as: food resources (type of food stores, food available, food prices, food production, etc.), socioeconomic/demographic characteristics (employment status, income, poverty status, household structure, etc.), coping actions to obtain food, and neighborhood characteristics, among others. All for the purpose of identifying the underlying causes that are critical to good policy developments.

Carmen María Pérez

Poverty line in defined in different ways. For example, World Bank calculates it as income below certain threshold per day (there were $1.25 and $2 in PPP in different periods).

If you know that for example in 2012, 30% of Indians had an income below $2 per day and want to find what % are poor in 2015 using the same standards, you should first take income distribution in nominal values in 2015 and then calculate inflation (CPI) during 2012-2015. So this border (let say, of $2 in nominal terms) could move, for example, to $2.2. Then you find corresponding fraction of people who have income below $2.2 (in nominal terms) in 2015.

Here may be part of the answer ...

The GDP per capita was as follows for these countries, expressed in current $US :

Syria:           2,080/ cap in 2007

Yemen :       1,408/ cap in 2013

Burundi :         286/ cap in 2014

Belgium :   47,517/ cap in 2014

U.S.A. :      54,629/ cap in 2014

So clearly, if we just bomb Syria, Yemen and Burundi off of the map, the data would be a lot stronger for suggesting that there is no relation between poverty and violence, in keeping with your hypothesis.

Thank you, Krishnan, for the additional resources on this topic.  A wholistic approach to intervention is optimal to break the cycle within families and to insure sustainability, I feel. There are several programs doing this but so many more are needed. It is a complex issue and coordinating the many facets can be daunting but not impossible. Thanks again.

Best,

Victoria

I want to share an example. 

Around ten women had assembled to discuss the goal of a livelihood and microfinance project,  how they would measure if it had been achieved and actually assessed progress. The steps that I follow are:

1. Divide the participants into groups of 5-6 women.

2. Ask the participants whether they know the goals of the project/programme. If they are not aware, share the goal with them. The goal needs to be written in big letters and on a big piece of paper!

3. Give the participants flash cards.

4. Ask the group what is required to achieve the goal. If they are non-literate they can draw on the flash card. Do not stick at this stage, as they may change their mind.

5. Then ask - to achieve what is written in the flash cards, what are the measures required and proceed similarly.

6. The participants may change their mind on the level of flash cards. Give them time to come to a firm conclusion and then stick the flash cards.

7. Now give the participants a pen, and ask them to rate achievement of indicator at each level. A rating of * means not achieved, a rating of *** means fully achieved, and a rating of **means partially achieved.

.

Interestingly the women stated the goal of the project was poverty reduction of women. The women identified two pathways to poverty reduction- increase women’s income and reduce household expenditure.  They observed that women’s income could increase if women-managed  income-generation programmes expanded  (many) and if their control over existing income enhanced (a few).  They further shared that women-managed income generation can expand only if they had livestock (many) or land (few) on their names.  The women noted that their control over income would be reflected in them having savings accounts on their name.  On the expenditure front, majority of women stated that expenditure can come down if men drank less and a few mentioned that if domestic violence was less health expenditure would be reduced.  Women observed that group should collectively intervene on these issues.

The project, the women observed, had had a moderate impact on most of the indicators they had listed, other than reduction in alcohol consumption and violence against women.  While the group did intervene in instances of violence against women it did not always meet with success

Source: Murthy, 2015, Tool kit on gender sensitive participatory methods for evaluation, Institute of Social Studies, New Delhi (being published in a month) 

Of the statistics books I have read, "Statistical Distributions in Engineering" by Karl Bury seems to allocate a disproportionate number of pages to censored sampling and distributions, which I found very interesting. This (very accessible) book might help to give you some fresh insights. 

I dislike intensely the phrase 'Western point of view'.  If you mean very many different ideas expressed without repression, under some form of democracy and carried out with full human rights then I can go along with Western and proud of it.  Is Greece now  non-Western?  Then I must also be in that camp since I entirely support efforts to create stimulus (as was done in Germany via the Marshall Plan, as well as East Germany).  Now joining the Euro for Greece was a mistake but country's should NOT be punished for peaceful mistakes as they were with the destruction of their industry and hih unemployment the past few years.  Anyway I'll leave that issue since the news is full of all that today.

On poverty, probably none of the people reading this article would starve in a drought in, say, Somalia.  Why not?  You have money or access to it. Hence people are poor simply because they dont have cash.  Dont make me laugh about the fact that they cant save..out of what?  Now how to channel cash to the poor?  Let's see the next World Bank Report on that, covering such issues as basic income, transfers, subsidies and yes, of course, how to pay for all that?  With historically low interest rates (except in developing countries - Kenya has rates of 15%..crazy!), enormous wealth exists in the world (the odd trillion dollars on pretty useless 'defense'), technology allowing most people NOT to work...clearly management and willingness must rank highly!  Recent reports of unhappiness with management at the World Bank by staff (not for the first time) might suggest that that organisation ought to be examined in more than one way!

Everything depends on the exact type of data and the shape of the distribution.

Aakanksha

You might find a recent NBER paper by Handbury and colleagues of interest WHAT DRIVES NUTRITIONAL DISPARITIES? RETAIL ACCESS AND FOOD

PURCHASES ACROSS THE SOCIOECONOMIC SPECTRUM http://www.nber.org/papers/w21126.  They conclude that differences in retail access (food deserts) account for very little (<10%) of the differences in purchases of nutritious foods across socio-economic groups. They also find that the nutritional quality of purchases made by households with low levels of income and education respond very little when new stores enter an area or when existing stores change their product offerings.

For Singapore's 'success' we forget the fact that much of the land used for public housing was already owned by the government, that Singapore had among the world's fastest growth in per capita income over a long period and (linked to this) a very small rural population and tightly controlled immigration so its very rapid economic growth did not come with very large migrant flows into the city,

The following reference may be useful:

Datt, G., and Ravallion, M. 1992. Growth and Redistribution Components of Changes

in Poverty Measures : A Decomposition with Applications to Brazil and India in the

1980s. Journal of Development Economics, 38(2): 275-295.

Ravallion, M. 2004. Pro-Poor Growth: A Primer. World Bank Policy Research

Working Paper 3242.

Ravallion, M. 2009. Why Don't We See Poverty Convergence? World Bank Policy

Research Working Paper 4974, the World Bank.

Ravallion, M., and Chen, S. 2003. Measuring Pro-poor Growth. Economics Letters,

78(1): 93-99.

Ravallion, M., and Datt, G. 2002. Why Has Economic Growth Been More Pro-Poor in

Some States of India Than Others? Journal of Development Economics, 68(2): 381-

400.

Dear Nil,

try the following reports / links:

Horst Köhler, James D. Wolfensohn (2000): Debt relieft for the porest countries. Milstone achieved. Joint Statement. (The pdf-file contains a list of 22 countries), see:    https://www.imf.org/external/np/hipc/2000/state/state.htm

World Bank (2000): World Bank Group Historical Chronology 2000, World Bank Events. (If you read all the events and check the "Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative" news, you will find the same list of 22 countries as above), see: http://go.worldbank.org/O76D3W7SW0

Wolrd Bank (2000): Press Briefing on Debt Relief Ahead of the G-8 Okinawa Summit. Proceedings. (There are 40 and 12 countries (sum = 52) mentioned by Mr. Gaeta, but only "18 countries were in the pipeline"), see: http://go.worldbank.org/RBE3OSFQ00

World Bank (2000): Debt forgiveness or reduction. (Download as Excel-file possible; there is also a list of the countries, which have got debt forgiveness or reduction actually). see: http://search.worldbank.org/quickview?view_url=http%3A%2F%2Fdatabanksearch.worldbank.org%2FDataSearch%2FLoadReport.aspx%3Fdb%3D2%26cntrycode%3D%26sercode%3DDT.DFR.DPPG.CD%26yrcode%3DYR2000

Good luck and kind regards, Detlef

Journal of World Development and Journal of Development Studies are two of best ranking journals related to poverty 

Dear S.J.,

the parameter (epsilon) is a parameter in order to integrate Rawl's concept of social justice (see the annex of my first contribution: de Maio, 2007, p. 850). So, the choice of the parameter (epsilon) is based on a normative/ethical judgement/assessment. From this point of view, the value "social justice" determines the action in this process of judgement / assessment. (Background: Atkinson Index is a parameter for welfare and welfare can't be measured without definining the normative frame)

So the choice of parameter (epsilon) depends on the weight, you want to give to the value "social justice". The parameter (epsilon) was designed in order to estimate the dimension of "inequality aversion". So, based on the following - sorry German-speaking - publication:

Unger et al (2013): Verteilungsbericht 2013. Trendwende noch nicht erreicht. WSI Report (10). Download: http://www.boeckler.de/pdf/p_wsi_report_10_2013,

you can define, related to chapter 3.1, pp. 19-21:

parameter (epsilon) = 0,5: little inequality aversion

parameter (epsilon) = 1,0: medium inequality aversion

parameter (epsilon) = 2,0: great inequality aversion

All reports, that I know, emphases that's important to choose a great inequality aversion (parameter (epsilon) = 2,0) in order to consider very low income levels. Personally, I assume, it could be valuable, to calculate the Atkinson Index with the three dimensions (see the diagrams on pp. 19-21, chapter 3.1) in order to illustrate the differences. Based on this, you can demonstrate the utility of a great inequality aversion.

Perhaps, you find a classification of parameter (epsilon) in the following original publications of Atkinson:

Atkinson Anthony (1970): On the Measurement of Inequality. Journal of Economic Theory, 2, S.244-263, 1970.

Atkinson Anthony (2007): Measuring Top Incomes: Methodological Issues. Top Incomes over the Twentieth Century. A contrast between European and English-Speaking Countries, Oxford University Press.

So finally, I would like to state, that the choice of parameter (epsilon) doesn't depend on a given income distribution (your question above), because it depends on the normative definition of the parameter (epsilon).

Kind regards, Detlef

hello

I think an extremely important issue, very complex. First would be good to specify the operational concepts of wealth, poverty, and intelligence (kind of intelligence).

No doubt under the parameters we use from the scientific world, social and environmental determinants influence significantly on growth and development of people.

For these scientists in our studies seek to seek the welfare of the communities identifying risk factors, and by identifying and collaborating on improving these determinants. Moreover from medicine, and public health the whole process of growth and development is currently studying before birth, where all the aforementioned factors influence.

I think that poverty limits the expression of intelligence of many people, and inappropiate social determinants (networks, infectious diseases, deficits, nutritional), neurologically damaging the body, before and after it was born. This brings us to generate strategies to prevent this damage, and ensure the best development of all people.

For example Mardonez et al,  Association of perinatal factors and school performance in primary school Chilean children, Journal of developmental Origin  of Health and disease 2013; 4839 230-238.

Journal of  Dohad 

Just one addition to a very complete answer by Detlef: for analytical purposes one can use a variety of poverty lines as each one selects a different part of a population to be defined as poor. In my view poverty is always relative so poverty line should be in a longer run adjusted to reflect movement in average, prevailing levels of income - in a given community - state or province. However, there are also poverty lines defined by the value of a selected basket of good and services which is recognized as a minimum people should be able to buy to live out of poverty. The contents of this basket should also be revised from time to time to reflect changes in both consumption patterns and aspirations of the society.

As regards poverty line which would be used for the policy purposes - like defining group of people entitled to income support or other benefits - it makes no sense to use poverty line which would define majority of the society as poor. It will be only useful to defined as poor and entitled to receive support from the others population which can be effectively supported within reasonable time horizon. That's why in many countries we have often at least two "official" poverty lines, where the second, lower one defines "extreme poverty"

Rather than thinking about slums as a negative, why not consider it as an unavoidable consequence of development, even maybe a positive indicator of progress?

Links for arguments to that effect...

These are different perspectives, but I'm not sure this is best framed as a dichotomy, since Rawls incorporates Utilitarian principles into his framework; his notion of a maximin is essentially Utilitarian in the sense it is minimising overall suffering for the worst off.  One could add a Kantian/deontological perspective to these two, and this also misses out a fourth perspective based on the concept of the public good / public interest which is from virtue ethics as in the attached (hopefully the link works please let me know if you want the pdf).

You can do a factor-cluster analysis. But if you have just one attribute (poverty) you can plot the figures for different states in different NSS years and identify the clusters. Do the graph in STATA instead of excel. 

Dear Erika,

please note that Piketti has conducted some of his research in collaboration with Tony Atkinson and others who looked into the interaction between inequality and wealth in the long run (this is a major research project of Tony Atkinson and Facundo Alvarez). See their joint article (link below). I am sure there is more written by them.

Good luck!

Dear Said, 

Depending on the countries you'd like to study you could also try:

Eurostat website (for European countries):

OECD website (check under the link income distribution and poverty): 

If you are interested in attitudes you can always check these data from the World Values Survey:

Gapminder: this website contains really useful data and you can also make your own graphs!

Good luck with your research!

Usually you do not include the impacts of Government social services. Only direct income payments are defined as public intervention. It could be interesting to include the value of public housing but you will loose the possibility of any international comparisons in terms of poverty reduction policies.

Dear @Sribas, here are some accents from UN strategy :"The 2010 United Nations Summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) concluded with the adoption of a global action plan to achieve the eight anti-poverty goals by their 2015 target date and the announcement of major new commitments for women’s and children’s health and other initiatives against poverty, hunger and disease."

I'm not an optimist in this regard!

Dear Geoffrey

You can use stata syntex from OPHI website. Do file of Bhutan sample is available in summer school material at OPHI website. I have some work on Multidimensional poverty in Pakistan by using PSLM data and MICS data. I will provide you the do files of stata very soon.

There is a some alternative measures. For instance, Generalized Entropy Indexes, Atkinson Index, Piesch index, Kakwani index. Each measure can exhibit differnt properties. So, for a detailed explanation, see, for example: Measuring Inequality - Frank A. Cowell

Arvydas,

I agree with Kumar on the point of inclusive economic growth and development. I am not sure but the Scandinavian economies seem to run something similar to that. Do not forget that the state of the very active poor does not remain stagnant when given opportunities to move to higher income brackets. Well articulated and thought out inclusive economic growth and development models tend to uplift the most active poor segments of society to higher income levels. This is not exactly the welfare state. Take for example where (in a fast growing economy) the State subsidizes access to Specialized Tertiary Education, ICT Skills acquisition, Maternal Reproductive and Child Health, Clean Drinking Water, Microfinance Loans, Adult Literacy Education, etc, to the active poor. This implies the probability of economically empowering the active poor increases tremendously. What is wrong with that??? How have the Scandinavians attempted to minimize these inequalities in general??

Barnabas Kiiza

students sometimes are taken as examples, too. As panel data are more expensive to collect, high frequency may refer to yearly frequency, rather than data collected every fifth year or more. It always depends upon the features of the phenomenon one is up to.

The previous comment by Hashwini Heerah asnwers the question, i think and points to several important directions to look at. Maybe the questions are "creation of wealth, for whom?", "condanation for whom?". As for poverty and wealth among states, capitalism along with colonisation & imperialism might be a good start to discuss the issue. It is not so easy not to remain poor if people ravage you from the means you have to survive.

I highly recommend you to read and use the Part IV POVERTY AND EQUITY: POLICY AND GROWTH, of the book POVERTY AND EQUITY. MEASUREMENT, POLICY AND ESTIMATION by Jean-Yves Duclos and Abdelkrim Araar (2006). Chapter 12 Poverty alleviation: Policy and growth is amazing, where you will find ALL you need to know about "budgeting" with abscence of redistributive costs as well as adding cost incurred for a given total budget spent on the poor, in both nice theoretical and practical levels. Also on its pages 234 & 235 much references are given for research done realted to budgetary rules under the more specific objective on poverty reduction. It has a full section of all posible effects on poverty from propoor growth as well.

Hi,

UNDP has an index named Humal Development Index classifying countries into four clusters.

Thanks. I made a presentation of my proposal and the panelists suggested that I use a qualitative and quantitative approach. Also, I would be narrowing down the values that I would want to study in this research because I didn't define it properly. It was also suggested that I add more personality factors because locus of control is just a small part of how indigent people really view themselves and and their situation. Your answers have really helped me. I'm looking forward to conducting this research next year. Cheers!

Thanks Andrew

I will go and read up

Dear Ms. Sukriti Jha, that it is perfectly ethical to use a methodology which has been used by any other researcher in your own work. Only you should give credit to the original author while describing your methodology. All of us actually do it at one place or the other. However, using the methodology without citing the reference or source should be considered unethical.

Look up the publications of Keetie Roelen (e.g. False Positives or Hidden dimensions: the definition and measurement of child poverty' - University Maastricht). Based on work in Vietnam.

Hi David,

I live in an affluent Northern New Jersey neighborhood with a nice house on 5 (unkempt) acres; my mortgage is paid off and our 3-car garage contains 2 late model Volvos and one classic Mercedes. We are only two people living in a large house with three bathrooms and a sauna. In short, I am not deprived. But, boy, am I marginalized, I am the only Democrat on my block and indeed the county in which I live (Morris County) is so Republican that a few years ago I registered as a Republican just because I was tired of being disenfranchised -- having been excluded from the polls at the primary for 15 years simply because there were never any Democrats on the slate. That, David, is what it means to be marginalized (with the only deprivation experienced being the poverty of Democratic candidates to vote for in Republican territory).

Gwen

oh ok, thanks a lot for the enlightenment, Mohammad. Your suggestion is well noted

I think it is about responsibility of the governments to make sure that everybody has at least minimum income security allowing life in dignity, which is a necessary condition (sometimes not sufficient) to create food security and affordable to all access to health care and other basic social services. They ways to provide such guarantees are multiple - for those able to work it is mainly through creation of quality employment opportunities, for those unable to work for various reason - through social protection systems.

See ILO Recommendation concerning national floors of social protection and the latest special issue of the International Social Security Review devoted to it.

Poverty Score Card (PSC) designed by the World Bank and used by the Government of Pakistan (GoP). PSC is based on 13 indicators used to measure access to basic needs. GoP hase used PSC to identify people living below poverty line in all the districts of Pakistan. This data is used to provide subsidy to poorest of the poor under Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP). Complete data is stored in the website of National Database Registration Authority (NADRA).

Education is indeed and effectually the best way of the poor to escape not only poverty but also to kill illiteracy and ignorance and unawareness of individual rights and responsibilities and to outflow all forms of social discrimination, not only in India and Africa but worldwide.

Education allows later the possibility of taking part at the political life and to be part of it and to know how to defend and protect the rights of the citizens who are marginalized, disregarded and unnoticed from the taker of the decisions makers.

Concerning morocco, education is very important for women, especially at the countryside. I am a president of the association of the friends of voluntary work for the human development at Sidi Allal Bahraoui in morocco and during the last sechs months I organized for the first time a course for more than 50 women between 18 and 60 years who have never been at a school. Now they are very happy, because they can read Arabic and they will continue to learn officially by us because we will be logistically helped from the ministry of education (I hope it). We have a program too for the girls and some boys living at the countryside of Sidi Allal Bahraoui who couldn’t follow their studies because of the long way till the city: We will try to prepare with them the Baccalaureate as a free candidates and the association is looking now for national and international institutions and organizations who would like to help us, in order to teach this people who are victims of their geographical, social and political structures.

Your question dear Irene is very interessting.