Conceptualizing Chronic Poverty

While there is world-wide agreement on poverty reduction as an overriding goal of development policy, there is little agreement on the definition of poverty. Four approaches to the definition and measurement of poverty are reviewed in this paper: the monetary, capability, social exclusion and participatory approaches. The theoretical underpinnings of the various measures and problems of operationalizing them are pointed out. It is argued that each is a construction of reality, involving numerous judgements, which are often not transparent. The different methods have different implications for policy, and also, to the extent that they point to different people as being poor, for targeting. Empirical work in Peru and India shows that there is significant lack of overlap between the methods with, for example, nearly half the population identified as in poverty according to monetary poverty but not in capability poverty, and conversely. This confirms similar findings elsewhere. Hence, the definition of povert...

/pdf/does-it-matter-that-we-do-not-agree-on-the-definition-of-s5zwxtsf3l.pdf

Does it Matter that we do not Agree on the Definition of Poverty? A Comparison of Four Approaches

Enduring Poverty and the Conditions of Childhood: Lifecourse and Intergenerational Poverty Transmissions

From correlates and characteristics to causes: thinking about poverty from a chronic poverty perspective

WCS Working Paper No. 26 - Poverty, development, and biodiversity conservation: Shooting in the dark?

This paper investigates whether monetary and non-monetary indicators tell the same story about chronic poverty using a unique two-period household panel from Vietnam in the 1990s. Using transition matrices and a simple measure of immobility, we find that monetary poverty is less persistent than malnutrition among adults and stunting among children (although there is some evidence of catch-up among stunted children). Monetary poverty is also found to be less persistent than primary and lower secondary school enrollments. Non-parametric tests on common samples reveal that the distributions of all these poverty indicators are different. Furthermore, defining chronic poverty to occur when an individual is monetarily poor, stunted, malnourished or out of school in both waves of the panel, we find the extent of overlap and correlation between the sub-groups of chronically poor is generally quite low. This implies that expanding the number of dimensions used to identify chronic poverty may not lead to greater clarity about the characteristics of chronic poverty.

Do Monetary and Non-Monetary Indicators Tell the Same Story About Chronic Poverty? A Study of Vietnam in the 1990s

This paper summarizes the literature on the impact of state subsidized or social health insurance schemes that have been offered, mostly on a voluntary basis, to the informal sector in low- and middle-income countries. A substantial number of papers provide estimations of average treatment on the treated effect for insured persons. We summarize papers that correct for the problem of self-selection into insurance and papers that estimate the average intention to treat effect. Summarizing the literature was difficult because of the lack of (1) uniformity in the use of meaningful definitions of outcomes that indicate welfare improvements and (2) clarity in the consideration of selection issues. We find the uptake of insurance schemes, in many cases, to be less than expected. In general, we find no strong evidence of an impact on utilization, protection from financial risk, and health status. However, a few insurance schemes afford significant protection from high levels of out-of-pocket expenditures. In these cases, however, the impact on the poor is weaker. More information is needed to understand the reasons for low enrollment and to explain the limited impact of health insurance among the insured.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2262703_code870937.pdf?abstractid=2262703

Edoardo Massett

Papers

Do Monetary and Non-Monetary Indicators Tell the Same Story About Chronic Poverty? A Study of Vietnam in the 1990s

The Impact of Health Insurance Schemes for the Informal Sector in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review