Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-plnhv Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2025-08-28T22:55:32.406Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

AN ASPECT OF VARIABLE POPULATION POVERTY COMPARISONS: DOES ADDING A RICH PERSON TO A POPULATION REDUCE POVERTY?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2014

Nicole Hassoun
Nicole Hassoun*
Affiliation:
Binghamton University, USAnhassoun@binghamton.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Poverty indexes are essential for monitoring poverty, setting targets for poverty reduction, and tracking progress on these goals. This paper suggests that further justification is necessary for using the main poverty indexes in the literature in any of these ways. It does so by arguing that poverty should not decline with the mere addition of a rich person to a population and showing that the standard indexes do not satisfy this axiom. It, then, suggests a way of modifying these indexes to avoid this problem.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , July 2014 , pp. 163 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Aguirregabiria, V. 2006. Sen-Shorrocks-Thon Index. In Encyclopedia of World Poverty, ed. Odekon, M.. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Arrhenius, G. 2013. Egalitarian concerns and population change. In Inequality in Health: Concepts, Measures, and Ethics, ed. Norheim, Ole Frithjof, 74–92. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bossert, W. 1990. Population replications and ethical poverty measurement. Mathematical Social Sciences 19: 143–158.Google Scholar
Chakravarty, S., Kanbur, S. and Mukherjee, D.. 2006. Population growth and poverty measurement. Social Choice and Welfare 26: 471–483.Google Scholar
Cranfield, J., Preckel, P. and Hertel, T.. 2007. Poverty analysis using an international cross-country demand system. In World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 4285. Washington, DC: World Bank. Available at <http://econ.worldbank.org/external/default/main?pagePK=64165259&theSitePK=469372&piPK=64165421&menuPK=64166322&entityID=000158349_20070727110724>.Google Scholar
Donaldson, D. and Weymark, J.. 1986. Properties of fixed-population poverty indices. International Economic Review 27: 667–688.Google Scholar
Foster, J., Greer, J. and Thorbecke, E.. 1984. A class of decomposable poverty measures. Econometrica 52: 762–766.Google Scholar
Frohlich, N. and J. A. Oppenheimer. 1992. Choosing Justice: An Experimental Approach to Ethical Theory. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Goldman, A. 1993. The psychology of folk psychology. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16: 15–28.Google Scholar
Gopnik, A. and Wellman, H.. 1995. Why the child's theory of mind really is a theory. Mind and Language 7: 145–171.Google Scholar
Hare, R. M. 1981. Moral Thinking. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Hassoun, N. 2008. Meeting need. Utilitas 21: 250–275.Google Scholar
Hassoun, N. 2010. Another mere addition paradox? Some reflections on variable population poverty comparisons. Working paper. World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER) Helsinki: UNU-WIDER.Google Scholar
Hassoun, N. and Subramanian, S.. 2012. An aspect of variable population poverty comparisons. Journal of Development Economics 98: 238–241.Google Scholar
Kanbur, R. 2006. Three conundrums in measuring poverty with a changing population. Poverty Focus. UNDP International Poverty Center. Available at <http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ess:wpaper:id:718>..>Google Scholar
Kanbur, R. and Mukherjee, D.. 2007. Premature mortality and poverty measurement. Bulletin of Economic Research 59: 339–359.Google Scholar
Kundu, A. and Smith, T. E.. 1983. An impossibility theorem on poverty indices. International Economic Review 24: 423–434.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, D. 1999. Principles of Social Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Parfit, D. 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Paxton, J. 2003. A poverty outreach index and its application to microfinance. Economics Bulletin 9 (2): 1–10.Google Scholar
Pogge, T. 2010. Millions killed by clever diluting of our promises. In CROP Poverty Brief/August 2010. Available at <http://crop.org/>..>Google Scholar
Rabinowicz, W. 2003. The size of inequality and its badness – some reflections around Temkin's inequality. Theoria 69: 60–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, A. 1976. Poverty: an ordinal approach to measurement. Econometrica 44: 219–231.Google Scholar
Sen, A. 1981. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Sen, A. 1997. Poor, relatively speaking. The Measurement of Inequality and Poverty, ed. Subramanian, S., Readers in Economics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Subramanian, S. 2002. Counting the poor: an elementary difficulty in the measurement of poverty. Economics and Philosophy 18: 277–285.Google Scholar
Subramanian, S. 2005a. Fractions versus whole numbers: on headcount comparisons of poverty across variable populations. Economic and Political Weekly 40 (43): 4625–4628.Google Scholar
Subramanian, S. 2005b. Headcount poverty comparisons. In International Poverty Centre One Pager No. 18. Brasilia: United Nations Development Programme.Google Scholar
Subramanian, S. 2006. Poverty measurement and theories of beneficence. Rights, Deprivation, and Disparity: Essays in Concepts and Measurement. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Townsend, P. 1985. A sociological approach to the measurement of poverty: a rejoinder to Professor Amartya Sen. Oxford Economic Papers 37: 659–668.Google Scholar
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 2007. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. In UNDP: New York. Available in: <http://www.mdgmonitor.org/goal1.cfm>..>Google Scholar
Xu, K. and Osberg, L.. 1999. An anatomy of the Sen and Sen-Shorrocks-Thon indices: multiplicative decomposability and its subgroup decompositions. In Halifax Dalhousie Working Paper Series. Nova Scotia: Dalhousie University.Google Scholar
Zheng, B. 1997. Aggregate poverty measures. Journal of Economic Surveys 11: 123–162.Google Scholar