This paper assesses the impact of social assistance benefits on household welfare in Moldova. Ignoring standard issues of impact evaluations such as selection bias, behavioral responses, unobserved heterogeneity and endogeneity, an incidence analysis suggests that increased spending on social...

Following the endorsement of the Millennium Development Goals, there is an increasing demand for methods to track poverty regularly. This paper develops an economically intuitive and inexpensive methodology to do so in the absence of regular, comparable data on household consumption. The minimum...

The aim of this paper is to assess the possible impacts of the Doha Round of negotiations on poverty in Cameroon. During the recent period of economic recovery, Cameroon has enjoyed a sharp decline in poverty with the headcount index falling from 53.3 percent of inhabitants in 1996 to 40.2...

Theories of relative deprivation predict negative welfare effects when friends and neighbors become better-off. Other theories point to likely positive benefits. The authors encompass both views within a single model, which motivates their tests using a survey for Malawi that collected data on...

Poverty estimates based on enumeration from a single point in time form the cornerstone for much of the literature on poverty. Households are typically interviewed once about their consumption or income, and their wellbeing is assessed from their responses. Global estimates of poverty that...

This paper proposes a non-parametric adaptation of a recently developed parametric technique to produce point estimates of intra-generational economic mobility in the absence of panel data sets that follow individuals over time. The method predicts past individual income or consumption using...

This study carries out a thorough investigation of the potential sources of mismatch in poverty and inequality levels and trends between the Tanzania National Panel Survey and Household Budget Survey. The main findings of the study include the following. First, the difference in poverty levels...

Poverty estimates based on cross-section data provide static snapshots of poverty rates. Although a time series of cross-section data can offer some insights into poverty trends, it does not allow for an assessment of dynamics at the household level. Such a dynamic perspective on poverty...

This study explores the short-run transitions between poverty, vulnerability, and middle class, using synthetic panels constructed from multiple rounds of Colombia's Integrated Household Survey (in Spanish Gran Encuesta Integrada de Hogares). The paper reports results from two approaches to...

This paper examines the determinants of agricultural productivity and its link to poverty using nationally representative data from the Nigeria General Household Survey Panel, 2010/11. The findings indicate an elasticity of poverty reduction with respect to agricultural productivity of between...