How well do static indicators identify the chronically poor?

https://doi.org/10.1016/0047-2727(94)90031-0Get rights and content

Abstract

We investigate how well the most widely used static welfare indicators perform in identifying the chronically poor. We propose a normative measure of performance: the cost of a given impact on chronic poverty when transfers are contingent upon a purely static indicator. Using longitudinal household data from rural India, we find that current consumption is not always a better indicator of chronic poverty than current income. Both, however, perform much better than other common indicators, such as food share and access to land.

References (25)

  • A.B. Atkinson

    On the measurement of inequality

    Journal of Economic Theory

    (1970)
  • P. Glewwe et al.

    Identifying the poor in developing countries: Do different definitions matter?

    World Development

    (1990)
  • M. Ravallion

    Land-contingent poverty alleviation schemes

    World Development

    (1989)
  • I. Adelman et al.

    Some dynamic aspects of rural poverty in India

    Economic and Political Weekly

    (1985)
  • S. Anand et al.

    Food and standard of living: An analysis based on Sri Lankan data

  • M.J. Bane et al.

    Slipping into and out of poverty, the dynamics of spells

    Journal of Human Resources

    (1986)
  • A. Bhargava et al.

    Does consumption behave as a martingale? Tests for rural India

    The Review of Economics and Statistics

    (1993)
  • M. Browning

    Children and household economic behavior

    Journal of Economic Literature

    (1992)
  • W.W. Daniel

    Applied nonparametric statistics

    (1990)
  • A. Deaton

    Three essays on a Sri Lanka household survey

  • A. Deaton et al.

    On measuring child costs: With applications to poor countries

    Journal of Political Economy

    (1986)
  • J. Foster et al.

    A class of decomposable poverty measures

    Econometrica

    (1984)
  • Cited by (0)

    Our thanks to Gaurav Datt, Paul Glewwe, Michael Lipton, T.N. Srinivasan, Tom Walker and the Journal's referees for their comments on the paper, and to Tom Walker and other staff of ICRISAT India for providing generous access to the household survey data used here. Work on this paper was done while Chaudhuri was on leave to the World Bank. Financial support from the World Bank's Research Committee (RPO 675-96) is gratefully acknowledged. These are the views of the authors, and should not be attributed to the World Bank, or any affiliated organization.

    View full text