Subjective welfare: Analysis of the NIDS Wave 1 dataset

Type Working Paper - NIDS Discussion Paper no.14
Title Subjective welfare: Analysis of the NIDS Wave 1 dataset
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2009
Page numbers 1-29
URL http://www.nids.uct.ac.za/home/index.php?/Nids-Documentation/discussion-papers.html
Abstract
Over the last two decades, recognition of the multi-dimensional nature of poverty among the research community and policymakers, together with the rapid proliferation of nationally-representative survey data in developing countries, has provided the impetus for a more inclusive approach to measuring and addressing poverty. In consequence, there have been a number of exciting new developments in the field of economic measurement. This new research agenda has included, inter alia, the use of mixed qualitative and quantitative (Q-Squared) poverty appraisal (Kanbur, 2005; Kanbur & Shaffer, 2007), experimentation with multidimensional poverty measures, renewed interest in the so-called “economics of happiness”, as well as renewed interest in the derivation of subjective poverty measures and poverty lines.1 This burgeoning field of research has encompassed, inter alia, concerns with self-assessed poverty status, relative economic position (the theory of ‘relative deprivation’), as well as socially perceived necessities and consensual definitions of poverty. In consequence, the long-established polorisation between ‘objective-quantitative’ and ‘subjective-qualitative’ traditions that has tended to dominate poverty analysis in developing countries has therefore begun to soften around the edges, with increasing experimentation and cross-fertilisation (Pradhan & Ravallion, 2000).

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