IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/31413.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The poverty-inequality relationship in Malawi: A multidimensional perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Mussa, Richard

Abstract

This paper looks at the linkage between poverty and inequality by investigating the poverty impacts of changes in within and between inequalities in Malawi. We recognize the multidimensional nature of both poverty and inequality by focusing on monetary (consumption) and non monetary (health and education) dimensions of well being. Two questions are answered namely; what is the contribution of within-group inequalities (vertical inequalities) to total poverty? And what is the contribution of between-group inequalities (horizontal inequalities) to total poverty? The second integrated household survey (IHS2) is used, and the results differ considerably across the three dimensions of well being. The elasticity of poverty with respect to within-region consumption inequalities is positive and higher than that of between-region inequalities, suggesting that reductions in vertical inequalities in consumption would have a higher poverty reducing effect. Between-region inequalities in health have a larger and positive effect on the health poverty headcount; on the other hand within-region inequalities in health have a larger and positive relationship with the health poverty gap and severity. We also find that an increase in both within and between region education inequalities reduce the education poverty headcount, but increase the education poverty gap and severity.

Suggested Citation

  • Mussa, Richard, 2011. "The poverty-inequality relationship in Malawi: A multidimensional perspective," MPRA Paper 31413, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:31413
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/31413/1/MPRA_paper_31413.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Augustin Kwasi Fosu, 2008. "Inequality and the growth-poverty nexus: specification empirics using African data," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(7), pages 563-566.
    2. Richard Mussa, 2013. "Spatial Comparisons of Poverty and Inequality in Living Standards in Malawi," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 81(2), pages 192-210, June.
    3. Augustin Kwasi Fosu, 2009. "Inequality and the Impact of Growth on Poverty: Comparative Evidence for Sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(5), pages 726-745.
    4. Wagstaff, Adam & Paci, Pierella & van Doorslaer, Eddy, 1991. "On the measurement of inequalities in health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 545-557, January.
    5. Mukherjee, Sanjukta & Benson, Todd, 2003. "The Determinants of Poverty in Malawi, 1998," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 339-358, February.
    6. Donaldson, David & Weymark, John A., 1983. "Ethically flexible gini indices for income distributions in the continuum," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 353-358, April.
    7. Basu, Kaushik & Foster, James E, 1998. "On Measuring Literacy," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 108(451), pages 1733-1749, November.
    8. Sahn, David E. & Stifel, David C., 2000. "Poverty Comparisons Over Time and Across Countries in Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 28(12), pages 2123-2155, December.
    9. David E. Sahn & Stephen D. Younger, 2006. "Changes in Inequality and Poverty in Latin America: Looking Beyond Income to Health and Education," Journal of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(2), pages 215-233, November.
    10. Abdelkrim Araar & Jean-Yves Duclos, 2010. "Poverty and Inequality: A Micro Framework," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 19(3), pages 357-398, June.
    11. Donaldson, David & Weymark, John A., 1980. "A single-parameter generalization of the Gini indices of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 67-86, February.
    12. Filmer, Deon*Pritchett, Lant, 1998. "Estimating wealth effects without expenditure data - or tears : with an application to educational enrollments in states of India," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1994, The World Bank.
    13. David E. Sahn & Stephen D. Younger, 2006. "Changes in inequality and poverty in Latin America: Looking beyond income to health and education," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 9, pages 215-234, November.
    14. David E. Sahn & David C. Stifel, 2002. "Robust Comparisons of Malnutrition in Developing Countries," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 84(3), pages 716-735.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Richard Mussa, 2013. "Spatial Comparisons of Poverty and Inequality in Living Standards in Malawi," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 81(2), pages 192-210, June.
    2. Mussa, Richard, 2010. "Poverty and Inequality in Standards of Living in Malawi: Does Religious Affiliation Matter?," MPRA Paper 24438, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Richard Mussa, 2014. "Household Expenditure Components and the Poverty and Inequality Relationship in Malawi," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 26(1), pages 138-147, March.
    4. Jane Kabubo-Mariara & Anthony Wambugu & Susan Musau, 2011. "Multidimensional Poverty in Kenya: Analysis of Maternal and Child Wellbeing," Working Papers PMMA 2011-12, PEP-PMMA.
    5. Duclos, Jean-Yves & Leblanc, Josée & Sahn, David E., 2011. "Comparing population distributions from bin-aggregated sample data: An application to historical height data from France," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 419-437.
    6. Salim Shah & Niranjan Debnath, 2022. "Determinants of Multidimensional Poverty in Rural Tripura, India," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 20(1), pages 69-95, March.
    7. Stifel, David, 2010. "The rural non-farm economy, livelihood strategies and household welfare," African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, African Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 4(1), pages 1-28, March.
    8. Guido Erreygers & Roselinde Kessels & Linkun Chen & Philip Clarke, 2016. "Decomposing Socioeconomic Inequality of Health," EcoMod2016 9574, EcoMod.
    9. Peter J. Lambert & Helen T. Naughton, 2009. "The Equal Absolute Sacrifice Principle Revisited," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(2), pages 328-349, April.
    10. Flaviana Palmisano, 2018. "Evaluating Patterns of Income Growth when Status Matters: A Robust Approach," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 64(1), pages 147-169, March.
    11. Carmen Puerta & Ana Urrutia, 2012. "Lower and upper tail concern and the rank dependent social evaluation functions," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(4), pages 3250-3259.
    12. Satya R. Chakravarty & Pietro Muliere, 2003. "Welfare indicators: A review and new perspectives. 1. Measurement of inequality," Metron - International Journal of Statistics, Dipartimento di Statistica, Probabilità e Statistiche Applicate - University of Rome, vol. 0(3), pages 457-497.
    13. Sabina Alkire & Maria Emma Santos, 2010. "Acute Multidimensional Poverty: A New Index for Developing Countries," Human Development Research Papers (2009 to present) HDRP-2010-11, Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
    14. Stephen P. Jenkins & Philippe Van Kerm, 2006. "Trends in income inequality, pro-poor income growth, and income mobility," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 58(3), pages 531-548, July.
    15. Simplice Asongu & Uchenna Efobi & Ibukun Beecroft, 2015. "Inclusive Human Development in Pre-crisis Times of Globalization-driven Debts," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 27(4), pages 428-442, December.
    16. Simplice Asongu & Jacinta Nwachukwu & Sara le Roux, 2019. "The role of inclusive development and military expenditure in modulating the effect of terrorism on governance," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 46(3), pages 681-709, August.
    17. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:3:y:2003:i:19:p:1-16 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Fabio Clementi & Mauro Gallegati & Lisa Gianmoena & Simone Landini & Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2019. "Mis-measurement of inequality: a critical reflection and new insights," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 14(4), pages 891-921, December.
    19. Rolf Aaberge, 2009. "Ranking intersecting Lorenz curves," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 33(2), pages 235-259, August.
    20. Marko Ledić & Ivica Rubil & Ivica Urban, 2023. "Tax progressivity and social welfare with a continuum of inequality views," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 30(5), pages 1266-1296, October.
    21. Simplice A. Asongu & Jacinta C. Nwachukwu, 2017. "The Comparative Inclusive Human Development of Globalisation in Africa," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 134(3), pages 1027-1050, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inequality; poverty; Malawi;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D30 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pra:mprapa:31413. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    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.