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Poverty Measures and Anti-Poverty Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2016

François Bourguignon  and
Gary S. Fields
François Bourguignon
Affiliation:
DELTA, Paris
Gary S. Fields
Affiliation:
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
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Summary

This paper analyzes the optimal allocation of a given antipoverty budget consistent with various usual measures of poverty. It is shown that it is generally optimal to give all the budget either to the poorest or to the richest of the poor. It is only with the Sen index of poverty that it is sometimes optimal to combine both types of allocation. This property may be related to the normalization rule used in the derivation of that measure and sheds some new light on the axiomatics of poverty measurement.

Résumé

Résumé

Cet article analyse l’allocation optimale d’un budget donné de lutte contre la pauvreté en fonction des mesures les plus courantes de la pauvreté. Il apparait ainsi qu’il est généralement optimal d’allouer la totalité du budget soit exclusivement aux plus pauvres, soit exclusivement aux plus riches parmi les pauvres. Ce n’est qu’avec la mesure de Sen qu’il peut parfois être optimal de combiner les deux types d’allocation. Cette propriété peut être rattachée à la règle de normalisation utilisée dans l’élaboration de cette mesure et éclaire sous un jour nouveau certains aspects axiomatiques de la mesure de la pauvreté.

Keywords

024025914024025914
Type
Research Article
Information
Recherches Économiques de Louvain/ Louvain Economic Review , Volume 56 , Issue 3-4: A Special Issue in Honor of Professor A. Sen : Alternatives to Welfarism , 1990 , pp. 409 - 427
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de recherches économiques et sociales 1990 

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Footnotes

*

We thank an anonymous referee for useful comments.

References

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