Fluctuations and persistence in poverty: a transient-chronic decomposition model for pseudo-panel data

Although many studies addressed poverty issues, very few of then did analyze the transient or persistent nature of this phenomenon. Encouraged by this lack of dynamic poverty analyses, the objective of this paper is to evaluate which features determine the relative position and the dynamics of the destitution state of the individual. Due to the scarcity of panel surveys in Brazil, it was used a pseudo-panel obtained from the Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios (PNAD/IBGE) database in this study. With these data, the state permanence and the state transience probabilities were estimated in a Markov matrix with the application of a bivariate probit model with endogenous switching for grouped data. It was chosen as the welfare indicator the per capita household income, which was analyzed in relation to a relative poverty line. Moreover, in order to verify the sensibility of the parameters estimated in the econometric analysis, distinct poverty lines were used and also different assumptions of household scale economies and of intrahousehold relative costs were made. The transient-chronic analysis is based on the distinction between stationary and transient components of intertemporal propensity to poverty. The results enabled to identify which groups in the population were especially sensitive to the chronic and to the transient types of poverty.