IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jhudca/v9y2008i1p131-147.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Counting Heads or Counting Televisions: Can Asset-based Measures of Welfare Assist Policy-makers in Russia?

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Wall
  • Deborah Johnston

Abstract

There has been a vigorous debate about poverty measurement in Russia, where both the poverty line and poverty data have been subject to criticism. We outline some of the issues raised and discuss the use of an alternative welfare measure based on household assets. Asset indices have mostly been constructed for low-income countries, supported by two arguments: first, the asset index appears to have a number of empirical advantages in terms of data collection; and second, it may be better at capturing long-term welfare than either income or expenditure data. We show that the asset index approach is useful in Russia, and may present policy-makers with a superior means of determining household welfare. However, our discussion raises a number of methodological issues that must be confronted by those constructing asset indices.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Wall & Deborah Johnston, 2008. "Counting Heads or Counting Televisions: Can Asset-based Measures of Welfare Assist Policy-makers in Russia?," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(1), pages 131-147.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:jhudca:v:9:y:2008:i:1:p:131-147
    DOI: 10.1080/14649880701811468
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14649880701811468
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/14649880701811468?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gimpelson, V. & Chernina, E., 2020. "How we perceive our place in income distribution and how the perceptions deviate from reality," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, vol. 46(2), pages 30-56.
    2. Garbero, Alessandra & Songsermsawas, Tisorn, 2017. "How Much have Agricultural Projects Contributed to Economic Mobility and Food Security in China?," 2017 Annual Meeting, July 30-August 1, Chicago, Illinois 258097, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    3. Kseniya Abanokova & Hai-Anh H. Dang, 2023. "Poverty in Russia: a bird’s-eye view of trends and dynamics in the past quarter of a century," Chapters, in: Jacques Silber (ed.), Research Handbook on Measuring Poverty and Deprivation, chapter 58, pages 627-635, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Rodrigo LOVATON DAVILA & Aine Seitz MCCARTHY & Dorothy GONDWE & Phatta KIRDRUAND & Uttan SHARMA, 2022. "Water, Walls, and Bicycles: Wealth Index Composition Using Census Microdata," JODE - Journal of Demographic Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 88(1), pages 79-120, March.
    5. Luc Christiaensen & Peter Lanjouw & Jill Luoto & David Stifel, 2012. "Small area estimation-based prediction methods to track poverty: validation and applications," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 10(2), pages 267-297, June.
    6. Mausumi Mahapatro & Deborah Johnston, 2020. "Imperfection Measures and the Production of Poverty: A Case Study of the Use of the Asset Index in Bangladesh," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 152(2), pages 513-531, November.
    7. Francesco Burchi, 2009. "On the Contribution of Mother’s Education to Children’s Nutritional Capabilities in Mozambique," Departmental Working Papers of Economics - University 'Roma Tre' 0101, Department of Economics - University Roma Tre.
    8. Garbero, A., 2016. "IFAD RESEARCH SERIES 7 - Measuring IFAD’s impact: background paper to the IFAD9 Impact Assessment Initiative," IFAD Research Series 280045, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
    9. Sara Stevano & Deborah Johnston & Emmanuel Codjoe, 2018. "Urban food security in the context of inequality and dietary change: a study of school children in Accra," Working Papers 20181804, Department of Accounting, Economics and Finance, Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, Bristol.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Asset index; Poverty; Russia;
    All these keywords.

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jhudca:v:9:y:2008:i:1:p:131-147. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CJHD20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.