IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/uwp/jhriss/v28y1993i1p162-184.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring Poverty among Canadian Households: Sensitivity to Choice of Measure and Scale

Author

Listed:
  • Shelley A. Phipps

Abstract

This paper uses microdata from the 1986 Statistics Canada Family Expenditure Survey to demonstrate that inequality-sensitive poverty measures such as the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (1984) index are as sensitive to the equivalence scale embodied in the poverty line as the more frequently used head count and poverty gap measures. Indices of the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke variety are useful, however, for revealing demographic subgroups experiencing extreme deprivation, information not provided by the more standard poverty measures. The paper also demonstrates that our understanding of the relative poverty experiences of important demographic subgroups such as children and the elderly can be influenced by our choice of equivalence scale.

Suggested Citation

  • Shelley A. Phipps, 1993. "Measuring Poverty among Canadian Households: Sensitivity to Choice of Measure and Scale," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 28(1), pages 162-184.
    • Handle: RePEc:uwp:jhriss:v:28:y:1993:i:1:p:162-184
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/146092
    Download Restriction: A subscripton is required to access pdf files. Pay per article is available.
    ---><---

    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. Pendakur, Krishna, 2002. "Taking prices seriously in the measurement of inequality," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(1), pages 47-69, October.
    2. Gianni Betti & Mehmet Ali Karadag & Ozlem Sarica & Baris Ucar, 2017. "How to Reduce the Impact of Equivalence Scales on Poverty Measurement: Evidence from Turkey," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 132(3), pages 1023-1035, July.
    3. Christos Koulovatianos & Carsten Schröder, 2023. "Income-dependent equivalence scales and choice theory: implications for poverty measurement," Chapters, in: Jacques Silber (ed.), Research Handbook on Measuring Poverty and Deprivation, chapter 4, pages 39-49, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Sen, Anindya & Rybczynski, Kathleen & Van De Waal, Corey, 2011. "Teen employment, poverty, and the minimum wage: Evidence from Canada," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 36-47, January.
    5. Thomas F. Crossley & Krishna Pendakur, 2002. "Consumption Inequality," Department of Economics Working Papers 2002-09, McMaster University.
    6. Tomson Ogwang, 2022. "The Foster–Greer–Thorbecke Poverty Measures Reveal More," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 164(3), pages 1481-1503, December.
    7. Thesia I. Garner & Kathleen Short, 2005. "Developing a New Poverty Line for the USA: Are There Lessons for India?," Working Papers 378, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    More about this item

    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:uwp:jhriss:v:28:y:1993:i:1:p:162-184. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://jhr.uwpress.org/ .

    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.