Risk-adjusted poverty in Argentina: measurement and determinants

1 de Novembro de 2006 | Publicação

Risk-adjusted poverty in Argentina: measurement and determinants

- Publicação autor corporativo (Autor institucional): NU. CEPAL. División de Desarrollo Económico
- Descrição física: 39 páginas.
- Editora: ECLAC
- Símbolo da ONU (Assinatura): LC/L.2589-P
- Data: 1 de Novembro de 2006
- ISBN: 9211216079

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Abstract

Abstract This paper presents a methodology for adjusting measures of income and poverty for the risk faced by a household. The approach draws on the standard economic concept of risk aversion, and it is based on the intuition that households will prefer a steady stream of income to a variable one with the same mean. Relying on a Constant Relative Risk Aversion utility function, we use panel data for Argentina to compute risk-adjusted income and poverty measures. At the aggregate level, we find that taking risk into account substantially increases the poverty headcount. Moreover, a regression analysis suggests that many household characteristics are correlated not only with the average income of the household over time, but also with its variability.