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The Measurement Of Poverty With Geographical And Intertemporal Price Dispersion: Evidence From Rwanda

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  • Christophe Muller

Abstract

It is not known to what extent welfare measures result from seasonal and geographical price differences rather than from differences in living standards across households. Using data from Rwanda in 1983, we show that the change in mean living standard indicators caused by local and seasonal price deflation is moderately significant at every quarter. By contrast, the differences in poverty measures caused by this deflation can be considerable, for chronic as well as transient or seasonal poverty indicators. Thus, poverty monitoring and anti‐poverty targeting can be badly affected by inaccurate deflation of living standard data. Moreover, when measuring seasonal poverty, the deflation based on regional prices instead of local prices only partially corrects for spatial price dispersion. Using annual local prices instead of quarterly local prices only yields a partial deflation, which distorts the measure of poverty fluctuations across seasons and biases estimates of annual and chronic poverty.

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  • Christophe Muller, 2008. "The Measurement Of Poverty With Geographical And Intertemporal Price Dispersion: Evidence From Rwanda," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 54(1), pages 27-49, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:revinw:v:54:y:2008:i:1:p:27-49
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4991.2007.00258.x
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    Cited by:

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    2. Christophe Muller, 2007. "Anti-Poverty Transfers without Riots in Tunisia," Discussion Papers 07/06, University of Nottingham, CREDIT.
    3. Christophe Muller, 2008. "The Measurement Of Poverty With Geographical And Intertemporal Price Dispersion: Evidence From Rwanda," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 54(1), pages 27-49, March.
    4. Gibson, John & Kim, Bonggeun, 2013. "Do the urban poor face higher food prices? Evidence from Vietnam," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 193-203.
    5. Nouréini Sayouti & Christophe Muller, 2021. "How does information on minimum and maximum food prices affect measured monetary poverty ? Evidence from Niger," CERDI Working papers hal-03117686, HAL.
    6. Richard Mussa, 2015. "Do the Poor Pay More for Maize in Malawi?," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(4), pages 546-563, 05-27.
    7. Arab Yarmohamadi, Javad & Abounoori, Esmaiel & Salem, Ali Asghar, 2016. "The Effect of Regional Price Adjustment of Household Expenditures on Poverty Indices in Iran’s Urban Areas," Journal of Money and Economy, Monetary and Banking Research Institute, Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, vol. 11(2), pages 119-134, April.
    8. Arsène Kouadio & Vincent Monsan & Mamadou Gbongue, 2008. "Réformes de politique agricole et dynamique de la pauvreté alimentaire en Côte d'Ivoire/Agricultural Policy Reforms and Food Poverty Dynamics in Côte d'Ivoire," Working Papers PMMA 2008-07, PEP-PMMA.
    9. Gaddis,Isis, 2016. "Prices for poverty analysis in Africa," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7652, The World Bank.
    10. Mussa, Richard, 2014. "Food Price Heterogeneity and Income Inequality in Malawi: Is Inequality Underestimated?," MPRA Paper 56080, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Carlos Maia & Servaas van der Berg, 2010. "When the remedy is worse than the disease: Adjusting survey income data for price differentials, with special reference to Mozambique," Working Papers 24/2010, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution

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