IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ess/wpaper/id714.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Poverty, Relative to the Ability to Eradicate It: An Index of Poverty Reduction Failure

Author

Listed:
  • Ravi Kanbur

Abstract

In this note we approach the question of relative poverty from a different angle. Fixing the poverty line, we ask: What is the extent of poverty relative to the resources available in the society to eradicate it? We argue that the same level of poverty is “worse†if the resources available to address it are greater. We characterize a class of indices that measure Poverty Reduction Failure and provide an empirical illustration of their suitability using data for 94 country observations in 2001.

Suggested Citation

  • Ravi Kanbur, 2006. "Poverty, Relative to the Ability to Eradicate It: An Index of Poverty Reduction Failure," Working Papers id:714, eSocialSciences.
    • Handle: RePEc:ess:wpaper:id:714
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.eSocialSciences.com/data/articles/Document11122006120.5781519.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Foster, James E, 1998. "Absolute versus Relative Poverty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(2), pages 335-341, May.
    2. Foster, James E & Shorrocks, Anthony F, 1991. "Subgroup Consistent Poverty Indices," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(3), pages 687-709, May.
    3. Shaohua Chen & Martin Ravallion, 2004. "How Have the World's Poorest Fared since the Early 1980s?," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 19(2), pages 141-169.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Jo Thori Lind & Karl Moene, 2011. "Miserly Developments," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(9), pages 1332-1352, June.
    2. Diganta Mukherjee, 2008. "Poverty measures incorporating variable rate of alleviation due to population growth," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 31(1), pages 97-107, June.
    3. Permanyer, Iñaki, 2014. "Assessing individuals' deprivation in a multidimensional framework," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 1-16.
    4. Ravallion Martin, 2010. "Do Poorer Countries Have Less Capacity for Redistribution?," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 1(2), pages 1-31, December.
    5. Andy Sumner, 2013. "Global Poverty, Aid, and Middle-Income Countries: Are the Country Classifications Moribund or is Global Poverty in the Process of 'Nationalizing'?," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2013-062, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    6. Andy Sumner, 2012. "Where Will the World’s Poor Live? An Update on Global Poverty and the New Bottom Billion," Working Papers 305, Center for Global Development.
    7. Chakravarty, Satya R. & D'Ambrosio, Conchita, 2013. "An axiomatic approach to the measurement of poverty reduction failure," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 874-880.
    8. Sumner, Andy, 2012. "Where Do The Poor Live?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(5), pages 865-877.
    9. Ravi Kanbur, 2018. "On the volume of redistribution: Across income levels and across groups," Working Papers 462, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    10. Merwan Engineer & Nilanjana Roy & Sari Fink, 2010. "“Healthy” Human Development Indices," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 99(1), pages 61-80, October.
    11. Sumner, Andy, 2013. "Global Poverty, Aid, and Middle-Income Countries: Are the Country Classifications Moribund or is Global Poverty in the Process of 'Nationalizing'?," WIDER Working Paper Series 062, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    12. Alessandra Michelangeli & Eugenio Peluso & Alain Trannoy, 2011. "Detecting a change in wealth concentration without the knowledge of the wealth distribution," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(3), pages 373-391, September.

    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. Benoit Decerf, 2021. "Combining absolute and relative poverty: income poverty measurement with two poverty lines," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 56(2), pages 325-362, February.
    2. WANG, Zuxiang & SMYTH, Russell & NG, Yew-Kwang, 2009. "A new ordered family of Lorenz curves with an application to measuring income inequality and poverty in rural China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 218-235, June.
    3. Indranil Dutta & Ajit Mishra, 2023. "Measuring vulnerability to poverty: a unified framework," Chapters, in: Jacques Silber (ed.), Research Handbook on Measuring Poverty and Deprivation, chapter 48, pages 523-534, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. repec:ilo:ilowps:385551 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Massimo Civardi & Enrica Chiappero-Martinetti, 2008. "Measuring poverty within and between population subgroups," Rivista Internazionale di Scienze Sociali, Vita e Pensiero, Pubblicazioni dell'Universita' Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, vol. 116(3), pages 305-320.
    6. Chakravarty, Satya R. & D'Ambrosio, Conchita, 2013. "An axiomatic approach to the measurement of poverty reduction failure," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 874-880.
    7. Sreenivasan Subramanian, 2004. "Indicators of Inequality and Poverty," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2004-25, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    8. DECERF, Benoit, 2014. "Income poverty measures with relative poverty lines," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2014022, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    9. Olivier Sterck, 2024. "Poverty Without Poverty Line," CSAE Working Paper Series 2024-07, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    10. Dipesh Gangopadhyay & Robert B. Nielsen & Velma Zahirovic-Herbert, 2021. "Methodology and Axiomatic Characterization of a Multidimensional and Fuzzy Measure of Deprivation," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 153(1), pages 1-37, January.
    11. Anker, Richard,, 2006. "A new methodology for estimating internationally comparable poverty lines and living wage rates," ILO Working Papers 993855513402676, International Labour Organization.
    12. Ravallion, Martin & Chen, Shaohua, 2019. "Global poverty measurement when relative income matters," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 1-1.
    13. Marchand, J. & Smeeding, T., 2016. "Poverty and Aging," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 905-950, Elsevier.
      • Marchand, Joseph & Smeeding, Timothy, 2016. "Poverty and Aging," Working Papers 2016-11, University of Alberta, Department of Economics, revised 20 Nov 2016.
    14. Victoria Danaan, 2018. "Analysing Poverty in Nigeria through Theoretical Lenses," Journal of Sustainable Development, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 11(1), pages 1-20, January.
    15. Fofack, Hippolyte, 2008. "Technology trap and poverty trap in Sub-Saharan Africa," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4582, The World Bank.
    16. Oihana Aristondo & Casilda Lasso De La Vega & Ana Urrutia, 2010. "A New Multiplicative Decomposition For The Foster–Greer–Thorbecke Poverty Indices," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(3), pages 259-267, July.
    17. Stéphane Mussard & Kuan Xu, 2006. "Multidimensional Decomposition of the Sen Index: Some Further Thoughts," Cahiers de recherche 06-08, Departement d'économique de l'École de gestion à l'Université de Sherbrooke.
    18. Vinod Thomas, 2009. "Income Disparity and Growth," Global Journal of Emerging Market Economies, Emerging Markets Forum, vol. 1(1), pages 63-86, January.
    19. Sanjay Reddy & Rahul Lahoti & Arjun Jayadev, 2015. "The global consumption and income project: An introduction and preliminary findings," WIDER Working Paper Series 003, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    20. Zhao, Chunkai & Chen, Boou & Song, Zhiyong, 2024. "School nutritious feeding and cognitive abilities of students in poverty: Evidence from the nutrition improvement program in China," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    21. Antonio Abatemarco & Massimo Aria & Sergio Beraldo & Michela Collaro, 2023. "Measuring Access and Inequality of Access to Health Care: a Policy-Oriented Decomposition," CSEF Working Papers 666, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Absolute Poverty; Relative Poverty; Poverty Reduction Failure;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty

    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:ess:wpaper:id:714. 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: Padma Prakash (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.esocialsciences.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.