This paper presents an axiomatic framework for measuring life time poverty over multiple periods. For an individual, we argue that lifetime poverty is influenced by both the snapshot poverty of each period and the poverty level of the "permanent" lifetime consumption; it is also influenced by how poverty spells are distributed over the life time. Two obvious candidates for aggregation are to aggregate over time and then across individuals, or vice versa. For a society, we consider a path-independence requirement to make these two approaches of aggregation consistent. We axiomatically characterize classes of lifetime poverty indices and derive dominance conditions of poverty orderings for both individual and societal lifetime poverty measurements.
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Paper provided by University of Guelph, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number
0814.
Find related papers by JEL classification: I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
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