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Poverty: Looking for the Real Elasticities

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  • Florent Bresson

    (CERDI - Centre d'Études et de Recherches sur le Développement International - UdA - Université d'Auvergne - Clermont-Ferrand I - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

After decades of intensive research on the statistical size distribution of income and despite its empirical weaknesses, the lognormal distribution still enjoys an important popularity in the applied literature dedicated to poverty and inequality. In the present study, we emphasize the drawbacks of this choice for the calculation of the elasticities of poverty. Using last version of WIID database, we estimate the growth and inequality elasticities of poverty using 1,842 income distributions under fifteen rival distribution assumptions. Our results confirm that the lognormal distribution is not appropriate for the analysis of poverty. Most of the time, it implies an overestimation of the elasticities and bias our estimation of the relative impact of growth and redistribution on poverty alleviation.

Suggested Citation

  • Florent Bresson, 2011. "Poverty: Looking for the Real Elasticities," Working Papers halshs-00562648, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00562648
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00562648
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    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Ole Boysen & Alan Matthews, 2008. "The Impact of Developed Country Agricultural Trade Liberalization on Poverty: A Survey," Working Papers hal-03416399, HAL.
    3. Misselhorn, Mark & Klasen, Stephan, 2006. "Determinants of the Growth Semi-Elasticity of Poverty Reduction," Proceedings of the German Development Economics Conference, Berlin 2006 15, Verein für Socialpolitik, Research Committee Development Economics.
    4. Florent Bresson, 2010. "A general class of inequality elasticities of poverty," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 8(1), pages 71-100, March.

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