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Income Fluctuations, Poverty and Well-Being Over Time: Theory and Application to Argentina

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Listed author(s):
  • Guillermo Cruces

    (STICERD & Economics Department, LSE)

Abstract

This paper studies poverty as a dynamic phenomenon, motivated by the recurring economic crises that affect developing countries and the incidence of income fluctuations on household welfare. While the increasing availability of household panel data has been exploited in theoretical analysis and empirical applications, the methodological and applied literatures still lack a unified framework. Echoing Atkinson (1987), this paper addresses the question of how poverty should be measured over time – or, in more general terms, how to measure well- being based on repeated observations of household income. The paper develops and illustrates a set of tools for empirical work based on theoretically sound extensions of the existing methodology for static distributional analysis. Moreover, this framework encompasses some of the existing approaches as special cases. These tools are illustrated with longitudinal data for Argentina in the 1995-2002 period, which is well suited for this type of analysis given the large fluctuations in household income due to the repeated economic crises in the country.

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File URL: http://econwpa.repec.org/eps/lab/papers/0502/0502007.pdf
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Paper provided by EconWPA in its series Labor and Demography with number 0502007.

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Length: 47 pages
Date of creation: 23 Feb 2005
Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpla:0502007
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 47
Contact details of provider: Web page: http://econwpa.repec.org

Keywords: Risk; Income Fluctuations; Panel Data; Poverty; Argentina;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
  • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
  • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

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Cited by:

  1. Johannes Gräb & Michael Grimm, 2007. "Robust Multiperiod Poverty Comparisons," Ibero America Institute for Econ. Research (IAI) Discussion Papers 160, Ibero-America Institute for Economic Research.
  2. Hoy, Michael & Zheng, Buhong, 2011. "Measuring lifetime poverty," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(6), pages 2544-2562.
  3. Nwankwo, Uche M. & Wolfgang, Bokelmann, 2008. "The Effect of Information and Market Access on Adopters' Income Level," 108th Seminar, February 8-9, 2008, Warsaw, Poland 48101, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
  4. Michael Savage, 2016. "Poorest Made Poorer? Decomposing income losses at the bottom of the income distribution during the Great Recession," Papers WP528, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).

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