Housing, Imputed Rent, and Households' Welfare

Housing is the largest durable good consumed by households. As such, any consumption-based measure of welfare, to be comprehensive, must include the value of the flow of services households derive from their dwellings, the so-called imputed rent. H...

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Main Authors: Ceriani, Lidia, Olivieri, Sergio, Ranzani, Marco
Format: Working Paper
Language:English
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/544041565094894609/Housing-Imputed-Rent-and-Households-Welfare
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32207
id okr-10986-32207
recordtype oai_dc
spelling okr-10986-322072022-09-19T12:16:46Z Housing, Imputed Rent, and Households' Welfare Ceriani, Lidia Olivieri, Sergio Ranzani, Marco RENT IMPUTATION INEQUALITY POVERTY MEASUREMENT SHARED PROSPERITY HOUSEHOLD WELFARE Housing is the largest durable good consumed by households. As such, any consumption-based measure of welfare, to be comprehensive, must include the value of the flow of services households derive from their dwellings, the so-called imputed rent. However, estimating imputed rents is a daunting task, which researchers and practitioners tend to overlook. This paper is the first attempt to assess the distributional impact of including housing in the welfare aggregate; the paper tests two estimation methods and analyzes four developing countries. The distributional impact cannot be predicted a priori, and evidence suggests it is context and method specific. Although changes in poverty and inequality are always statistically significant, they are only occasionally larger than one percentage point. By contrast, shared prosperity exhibits sizable changes, which might also determine international re-rankings. Albeit the inclusion of imputed rents reshuffles the set of poor households, observed changes in the socioeconomic profiling of the poor are unlikely to affect pro-poor policy design. 2019-08-07T19:43:04Z 2019-08-07T19:43:04Z 2019-08 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/544041565094894609/Housing-Imputed-Rent-and-Households-Welfare http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32207 English Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8955 CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Policy Research Working Paper Albania Bangladesh Iraq Peru
repository_type Digital Repository
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution Digital Repositories
building World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection World Bank
language English
topic RENT IMPUTATION
INEQUALITY
POVERTY MEASUREMENT
SHARED PROSPERITY
HOUSEHOLD WELFARE
spellingShingle RENT IMPUTATION
INEQUALITY
POVERTY MEASUREMENT
SHARED PROSPERITY
HOUSEHOLD WELFARE
Ceriani, Lidia
Olivieri, Sergio
Ranzani, Marco
Housing, Imputed Rent, and Households' Welfare
geographic_facet Albania
Bangladesh
Iraq
Peru
relation Policy Research Working Paper;No. 8955
description Housing is the largest durable good consumed by households. As such, any consumption-based measure of welfare, to be comprehensive, must include the value of the flow of services households derive from their dwellings, the so-called imputed rent. However, estimating imputed rents is a daunting task, which researchers and practitioners tend to overlook. This paper is the first attempt to assess the distributional impact of including housing in the welfare aggregate; the paper tests two estimation methods and analyzes four developing countries. The distributional impact cannot be predicted a priori, and evidence suggests it is context and method specific. Although changes in poverty and inequality are always statistically significant, they are only occasionally larger than one percentage point. By contrast, shared prosperity exhibits sizable changes, which might also determine international re-rankings. Albeit the inclusion of imputed rents reshuffles the set of poor households, observed changes in the socioeconomic profiling of the poor are unlikely to affect pro-poor policy design.
format Working Paper
author Ceriani, Lidia
Olivieri, Sergio
Ranzani, Marco
author_facet Ceriani, Lidia
Olivieri, Sergio
Ranzani, Marco
author_sort Ceriani, Lidia
title Housing, Imputed Rent, and Households' Welfare
title_short Housing, Imputed Rent, and Households' Welfare
title_full Housing, Imputed Rent, and Households' Welfare
title_fullStr Housing, Imputed Rent, and Households' Welfare
title_full_unstemmed Housing, Imputed Rent, and Households' Welfare
title_sort housing, imputed rent, and households' welfare
publisher World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate 2019
url http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/544041565094894609/Housing-Imputed-Rent-and-Households-Welfare
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/32207
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