This paper extends the previous literature on the normative links between the measurement of poverty, social welfare and inequality. We show how, when the range of possible poverty lines is unbounded above, a robust ranking of absolute poverty may be interpreted as a robust ranking of social...

This paper develops criteria for a new concept of restricted inequality dominance and show how they relate to criteria for comparing relative poverty. The results warn against the use of some popular indices of inequality.\ They do, however, suggest an interesting extension of the Schutz...

This paper proposes graphical methods to determine whether commodity-tax changes are socially improving , in the sense of improving social welfare or decreasing poverty for large classes of social welfare and poverty indices. It also derives estimators of critical poverty lines and economic...

We propose simple graphical methods to identify poverty-reducing marginal reforms of transfer programs. The methods are based on Program Dominance curves that display cumulative program benefits weighted by powers of poverty gaps. These curves can be decomposed simply as sums of targeting...

Throughout this article, we utilize consumption dominance curves, a tool developed by Makdissi and Wodon (2002) to analyze the impacts on poverty brought on by changes in the food subsidy system in Egypt. The Egypt Integrated Household Survey (EIHS) of 1997 allows us to conclude that changes...

The poverty impact of indirect tax reforms is analyzed using sequential stochastic dominance methods. This allows agents to differ in dimensions that cannot always be precisely captured within the usual money-metric indicators of living standards. Examples of such dimensions include household...

Dans cet article, nous analysons l'impact des politiques de transferts publics sur la pauvreté au Canada et aux états-Unis à l'aide de la base de données du Luxembourg Income Study. Pour ce faire, nous utilisons une méthode basée sur la valeur de Shapley afin de pouvoir attribuer à chaque...

This paper extends familiar results on the optimal pricing of publicly provided goods and price cap regulations in a stochastic dominance framework. The key advantage is that the assessment as to whether pricing or price cap reforms are poverty reducing or welfare improving is not contingent on...

In this article, we analyze how various historical modifications to welfare and old age pensions programs have affected poverty in Canada.

To better understand the geographic determinants of poverty in Albania, this article proposes a methodology similar to that developed by Ravallion and Wodon (1999). Our methodology’s main contribution resides within how we utilize the entirety of a household’s joint distribution of...