erc/metu
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IN ECONOMICS  IV
September 13-16, 2000, Ankara

Measures of Poverty: Comparative Approach to Turkey (1987-1994)

Raziye Selim (İstanbul Technical University)

Abstract  

Poorness can be defined the statue of a person whose the social welfare level is under the minimum level of absolute or relative life standard of a society. According to the statistical point of view, poverty is a sub-concept under inequality, which put emphasis on the lower end of the distribution of income. In the measurements of poverty, the first problem we encounter is to identify the poor among the whole population. This problem is overcome by selecting a “poverty line”. We aim to calculate various poverty measures based on already existing poverty line calculation. There is a large literature on poverty measures. The most common measure is the head-count index of poverty given by the proportion of the population for whom income (or equivalent household disposable income) is less than the poverty line. The other measure is the calculation of the poverty gap, which is the difference between the poverty line and the income of the poor, as a percentage of the poverty line. The last index we use is the Sen Index, which considers both the intensity of poverty and the distribution of income among the poor. This paper also attempts to determine the changes in the poverty of Turkish household from 1987 to 1994 using these measures. Data come from the Survey of Household Income and Consumption Expenditures conducted by the State Institute of Statistics of Turkey for both years.

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Middle East Technical University
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