These slides are for Beahrs instructional use only' Regarding the Vosti lectures on your CD please d

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• These slides are for Beahrs instructional use
  only. Regarding the Vosti lectures on your CD -
  please do not distribute electronic versions.
  Thanks!

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Defining, Measuring and Understanding Poverty
Stephen A. Vosti
Center for Natural Resources Policy Analysis, UC
Davis
July 2003
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Outline for the Session

• Identifying the poor
• Measures of poverty
• Poverty dynamics
• The state of the world
• Income-based measures
• HDI measures
• Income flows versus asset portfolios
• Welfare versus conservation investment poverty
• What does it mean to be poor?

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Identifying the Poor
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Measures of Poverty

• General index
• If alpha 0 Headcount ratio or incidence of
  poverty of the population in poverty
• If alpha 1 Poverty gap index or depth of
  poverty
• If alpha 2 (or more) Severity of poverty
  index

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Dynamics of Poverty



z

Never poor Transient poor Chronic poor
Persistent poor Chronic 0 Chronic
0 Chronic gt 0 Chronic gt 0 Transient
0 Transient gt 0 Transient gt 0 Transient gt 0
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World Income Distribution
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Income Poverty Worldwide -- 1999

• 1.2 billion people worldwide had consumption
  levels below 1 a day (23 percent of the
  population of the developing world)
• 2.8 billion lived on less than 2 a day.

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Geographic Distribution of Poverty
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Geographic Distribution of Poverty
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Some Progress Has Been Made
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National Poverty Assessments
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OVERCOMING HUMAN POVERTY UNDP Poverty Report
2000

• Two ways of measuring poverty
• The 1 per day is an income measure of poverty
  it measures the percentage of people who live on
  less than 1 per day
• The Human Poverty Index (HPI)

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OVERCOMING HUMAN POVERTY UNDP Poverty Report
2000

• The HPI measures deprivation in basic
• human development. It takes into account
• of people expected to die before age 40
• of adults who are illiterate
• of population without access to health
  services
• of population without access to safe water
• of children under five who are underweight
• The following maps compare Income and Human
  Poverty

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OVERCOMING HUMAN POVERTY UNDP Poverty Report
2000
Population living on less than US1 Per Day (per
cent)
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OVERCOMING HUMAN POVERTY UNDP Poverty Report
2000
Human Poverty Index for Developing Countries
Countries that may not be very poor in terms of
income poverty may suffer from high levels of
human poverty for example, when a large
percentage of the population is illiterate or
malnourished.
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Asset Composition of Rural Households
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Welfare Versus Conservation Investment Poverty
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What Does It Mean to Be Poor?

• Very little income
• Low achievement in education
• Poor health
• Poor nutritional status
• Labor is your primary asset
• Very little power
• No voice in important matters
• Vulnerable to everything
• Live in fear
• Life will be relatively short

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Cross-Regional Differences in Infant Mortality
Rates
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(No Transcript)
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Within- and Cross-Regional Differences in Infant
Mortality Rates
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Within-Country Differences in Child Mortality