Statistical Analysis With Missing Data (2nd ed.) (Book)

In his Tanner Lecture of 1979 called “Equality of What?” Amartya Sen asked what metric egalitarians should use to establish the extent to which their ideal is realized in a given society. What aspect(s) of a person’s condition should count in a fundamental way for egalitarians, and not merely as cause of or evidence of or proxy for what they regard as fundamental? In this study I examine answers to that question, and discussions bearing on that question, in recent philosophical literature. I take for granted that there is something which justice requires people to have equal amounts of, not no matter what, but to whatever extent is allowed by values which compete with distributive equality; and I study what a number of authors who share that egalitarian view have said about the dimension(s) or respect(s) in which people should be made more equal, when the price in other values of moving toward greater equality is not intolerable. I also advance an answer of my own to Sen’s question. My answer is the product of an immanent critique of Ronald Dworkin, one, that is, which rejects Dworkin’s declared position because it is not congruent with its own underlying motivation. My response to Dworkin has been influenced by Richard Arneson’s work in advocacy of “equality of opportunity for welfare,” but my answer to Sen’s question is not that Arnesonian one, nor is my answer as well formulated as Arneson’s is.1 It needs much further refinement, but I nevertheless present it here, in a rough-and-ready form, because of its association with relatively fi nished criticisms of others which I think are telling. If this study contributes to understanding, it does so more because of those criticisms than because of the positive doctrine it affi rms.

On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice

Economic Mobility and the Rise of the Latin American Middle Class

Foreword to "Cyclical Analysis of Time Series: Selected Procedures and Computer Programs"

Adaptive social protection (ASP) helps to build the resilience of poor and vulnerable households to the impacts of large, covariate shocks, such as natural disasters, economic crises, pandemics, conflict, and forced displacement. Through the provision of transfers and services directly to these households, ASP supports their capacity to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to the shocks they face, before, during, and after these shocks occur. Over the long term, by supporting these three capacities, ASP can provide a pathway to a more resilient state for households that may otherwise lack the resources to move out of chronically vulnerable situations. Adaptive Social Protection: Building Resilience to Shocks outlines an organizing framework for the design and implementation of ASP, providing insights into the ways in which social protection systems can be made more capable of building household resilience. By way of its four building blocks, programs, information, finance, and institutional arrangements and partnerships, the framework highlights both the elements of existing social protection systems that are the cornerstones for building household resilience, as well as the additional investments that are central to enhancing their ability to generate these outcomes. In this report, the ASP framework and its building blocks have been elaborated primarily in relation to natural disasters and associated climate change. Nevertheless, many of the priorities identified within each building block are also pertinent to the design and implementation of ASP across other types of shocks, providing a foundation for a structured approach to the advancement of this rapidly evolving and complex agenda.

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Adaptive Social Protection : Building Resilience to Shocks

In the economic literature on poverty, various methods have been proposed for measuring a phenomenon known as ‘vulnerability’. However, after more than a quarter century of research, no consensus has been reached on how to identify such vulnerable individuals within a given population. Some misunderstandings have also arisen from the overlapping of other closely related concepts, such as the expectation of being poor, expected poverty, multi-period poverty and risk exposure. This paper offers a detailed conceptual discussion on vulnerability to poverty and its related elements, reviewing a wide range of identifying criteria provided in the literature. It is found that according to the state of the art in this field of research, two key elements stand out in identifying vulnerable individuals: an expected well-being below the poverty line and a relevant risk of falling into poverty due to downside deviation from a reference level of well-being. The traditional classification of vulnerability approaches has been updated into four groups: (i) those that stress the element of exposure to risk; (ii) those that emphasize the element of expected poverty; (iii) those that define vulnerability through a utility gap and (iv) those that are supported by a mean-risk dominance criterion.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/joes.12216

Identifying vulnerability to poverty: a critical survey

A method to measure vulnerability to multidimensional poverty is proposed under a mean–risk behaviour approach. We extend the unidimensional downside mean–semideviation measurement of vulnerability to poverty towards the multidimensional space by incorporating this approach into Alkire and Foster’s multidimensional counting framework. The new approach is called the vulnerability to multidimensional poverty index (VMPI), alluding to the fact that it can be used to assess vulnerability to poverty measured by the multidimensional poverty index (MPI). The proposed family of vulnerability indicators can be estimated using cross-sectional data and can include both binary and metric welfare indicators. It is flexible enough to be applied for measuring vulnerability in a wide range of MPI designs, including the Global MPI. An empirical application of the VMPI and its related indicators is illustrated using the official MPI of Chile as the reference poverty measurement. The estimates are performed using the National Socioeconomic Characterisation Survey (CASEN) for the year 2017.

/pdf/measuring-vulnerability-to-multidimensional-poverty-3falrebo8r.pdf

Measuring Vulnerability to Multidimensional Poverty

OBJECTIVE To assess the possible presence of inequality of opportunities in the health status of Chileans, according to sociodemographic circumstances. METHODS Self-rated health data were used from the Chilean National Health Survey of 2010 to test the hypothesis of strong and weak equality of opportunities in the health status of the Chilean population. These hypotheses were tested using nonparametric techniques and second-order stochastic dominance criteria. RESULTS Robust empirical evidence was obtained, which indicate that the education level of the mother, household socioeconomic status, sex, zone, and region of residence determine opportunities to achieve good health in Chile. CONCLUSIONS Better health status was identified for Chilean adults whenever their mothers had a higher education level, their household income was higher, they were men, or lived in urban areas. The region of residence also affects opportunities to achieve good health in Chile.

/pdf/inequality-of-opportunity-in-health-evidence-from-chile-4zmcbain7a.pdf

Inequality of opportunity in health: evidence from Chile.

Using the downside mean-semideviation for measuring vulnerability to poverty

Este documento fue preparado por Mauricio Gallardo y Michael Pedersen, consultores de la Division de Estadistica y Proyecciones Economicas de la CEPAL, en el marco de las actividades del proyecto CEPAL/Comision Europea Red de dialogo macroeconomico REDIMA fase II.Las opiniones expresadas en este documento, que no ha sido sometido a revision editorial, son de exclusiva responsabilidad de los autores pueden no coincidir con las de la Organizacion. RESUMENEn este documento se describen dos metodologias para construir indicadores lideres compuestos regionales. El proposito es decidir cual es mejor para construir un indicador regional de America Latina.La primera metodologia presentada en el documento, es la del sistema de indicadores lideres compuestos de la Organizacion para la Cooperacion y el Desarrollo Economico. De acuerdo con esta metodologia, primero se determina un ciclo de referencia con datos de indicadores de la produccion industrial. Despues se seleccionan indicadores lideres de la serie de referencia y se usan herramientas estadisticas para calcular el indicador lider compuesto que tiene caracteristicas deseables segun diferentes criterios estandares. La Organizacion para la Cooperacion y el Desarrollo Economico calcula indicadores lideres compuestos para varios paises y regiones.La segunda metodologia presentada es la del indicador de sentimientos economicos de la Comision Europea. En los paises de la Union Europea se hacen encuestas mensuales de confianza empresarial y de consumidores. Con las repuestas obtenidas se construyen cinco indicadores de confianza de: industria manufacturera, servicios, consumidores, construccion y comercio minorista. Los indicadores regionales se calculan con ponderaciones adecuadas y el indicador de sentimientos economicos se construye con metodos de normalizacion, agregacion y estandarizacion de series de tiempo.En el documento se resume la literatura sobre el uso practico y desempeno de los dos sistemas de indicadores lideres. Aunque los resultados varian, se encuentra que el balance general es favorable a ambos sistemas. Sin embargo, la metodologia de la Organizacion para la Cooperacion y el Desarrollo Economico sirve mejor para construir un indicador regional para America Latina, dada su mayor versatilidad y debido a la carencia de suficientes encuestas de confianzas en la region.

/pdf/indicadores-lideres-compuestos-resumen-de-metodologias-de-1udkys4emr.pdf

Mauricio Gallardo

Papers

Identifying vulnerability to poverty: a critical survey

Measuring Vulnerability to Multidimensional Poverty

Inequality of opportunity in health: evidence from Chile.

Using the downside mean-semideviation for measuring vulnerability to poverty

Indicadores líderes compuestos: resumen de metodologías de referencia para construir un indicador regional en América Latina