Should Consumption Sub-Aggregates Be Used to Measure Poverty?

Frequent measurement of poverty is challenging, as measurement often relies on complex and expensive expenditure surveys that try to measure expenditures on a comprehensive consumption aggregate. This paper investigates the use of consumption...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Christiaensen, Luc, Ligon, Ethan, Pave Sohnesen, Thomas
Format:	Working Paper
Language:	English
Published:	World Bank, Washington, DC 2020
Subjects:	CONSUMPTION POVERTY MEASUREMENT ENGEL CURVE CONSUMPTION SUB-AGGREGATE
Online Access:	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/931591593607254270/Should-Consumption-Sub-Aggregates-Be-Used-to-Measure-Poverty http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34027

id	okr-10986-34027
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-340272022-09-20T00:13:00Z Should Consumption Sub-Aggregates Be Used to Measure Poverty? Christiaensen, Luc Ligon, Ethan Pave Sohnesen, Thomas CONSUMPTION POVERTY MEASUREMENT ENGEL CURVE CONSUMPTION SUB-AGGREGATE Frequent measurement of poverty is challenging, as measurement often relies on complex and expensive expenditure surveys that try to measure expenditures on a comprehensive consumption aggregate. This paper investigates the use of consumption "sub-aggregates" instead. The use of consumption sub-aggregates is theoretically justified if and only if all the Engel curves are linear for any realization of prices. This is very stringent. However, it may be possible to empirically identify certain goods that happen to have linear Engel curves given prevailing prices, and when the effect of price changes is small, such a sub-aggregate might work in practice. The paper constructs such linear sub-aggregates using data from Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. The findings show that using sub-aggregates is ill-advised in practice as well as in theory. This raises questions about the consistency of the poverty-tracking efforts currently applied across countries, since obtaining exhaustive consumption measures remains an unmet challenge. 2020-07-06T18:44:30Z 2020-07-06T18:44:30Z 2020-07 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/931591593607254270/Should-Consumption-Sub-Aggregates-Be-Used-to-Measure-Poverty http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34027 English Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9312 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 Africa Sub-Saharan Africa West Africa Rwanda Tanzania Uganda
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	English
topic	CONSUMPTION POVERTY MEASUREMENT ENGEL CURVE CONSUMPTION SUB-AGGREGATE
spellingShingle	CONSUMPTION POVERTY MEASUREMENT ENGEL CURVE CONSUMPTION SUB-AGGREGATE Christiaensen, Luc Ligon, Ethan Pave Sohnesen, Thomas Should Consumption Sub-Aggregates Be Used to Measure Poverty?
geographic_facet	Africa Sub-Saharan Africa West Africa Rwanda Tanzania Uganda
relation	Policy Research Working Paper;No. 9312
description	Frequent measurement of poverty is challenging, as measurement often relies on complex and expensive expenditure surveys that try to measure expenditures on a comprehensive consumption aggregate. This paper investigates the use of consumption "sub-aggregates" instead. The use of consumption sub-aggregates is theoretically justified if and only if all the Engel curves are linear for any realization of prices. This is very stringent. However, it may be possible to empirically identify certain goods that happen to have linear Engel curves given prevailing prices, and when the effect of price changes is small, such a sub-aggregate might work in practice. The paper constructs such linear sub-aggregates using data from Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. The findings show that using sub-aggregates is ill-advised in practice as well as in theory. This raises questions about the consistency of the poverty-tracking efforts currently applied across countries, since obtaining exhaustive consumption measures remains an unmet challenge.
format	Working Paper
author	Christiaensen, Luc Ligon, Ethan Pave Sohnesen, Thomas
author_facet	Christiaensen, Luc Ligon, Ethan Pave Sohnesen, Thomas
author_sort	Christiaensen, Luc
title	Should Consumption Sub-Aggregates Be Used to Measure Poverty?
title_short	Should Consumption Sub-Aggregates Be Used to Measure Poverty?
title_full	Should Consumption Sub-Aggregates Be Used to Measure Poverty?
title_fullStr	Should Consumption Sub-Aggregates Be Used to Measure Poverty?
title_full_unstemmed	Should Consumption Sub-Aggregates Be Used to Measure Poverty?
title_sort	should consumption sub-aggregates be used to measure poverty?
publisher	World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate	2020
url	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/931591593607254270/Should-Consumption-Sub-Aggregates-Be-Used-to-Measure-Poverty http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34027
_version_	1764480035608068096

Should Consumption Sub-Aggregates Be Used to Measure Poverty?

Similar Items