Diamonds in the Rough?: Repurposing Multi-Topic Surveys to Estimate Individual-Level Consumption Poverty

Abstract

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

Individual Wealth Inequality: Measurement and Evidence from Low- and Middle-Income Countries

“…With the exception of Tanzania, urban inequality tends to be somewhat greater than rural inequality across countries. Greater inequality as measured through individual-level wealth data is consistent with other recent studies that have examined how consumption-based poverty measures can be underestimated when examining outcomes only at the household level (Brown et al, 2018;Bose-Duker et al, 2021). Notes:…”

“…elicited from individuals, and at the asset-level) for characterizing gender inequities in wealth in low-and middle-income countries. Second, inequality as measured by household per capita wealth far outpaces more standard measures based on household per capita consumption expenditure, and individual-level variation in wealth leads to even higher measures of inequality across countries, similar to recent findings on intra-household consumption poverty (Brown et al, 2018;Bose-Duker et al, 2021). Intra-household wealth inequality has a substantial role in explaining overall wealth inequality, and land, in particular, is an important driver of inequality, although there is variation by country as to whether residential or non-residential land plays a greater role.…”