Measuring poverty

• Pages: 165

Page 165

Poverty can be measured many ways. In this paper, the poor are defined as those who live on less than $2 a day (in 1993 prices), a measure that makes it possible (given World Bank data) to study a large number of countries, including some transition economies. It is important to include transition economies in the data set because they have specific characteristics-high average income and low income inequality (measured by the Gini coefficient)- that might influence the link between growth and poverty reduction.

Indicators for the poverty rate and income distribution are...