Suchergebnisse

In the past, studies on poverty in a developing country like
Pakistan have usually been based on an absolute (e. g. basic needs)
concept of poverty see, e. g., Naseem (1977); Irfan and Amjad (1984);
Ercelawn (1990) and Malik (1992). In this paperl we will state the case
for using relative poverty thresholds, and present poverty statistics
for Pakistan based on data from the Household Income and Expenditure
Survey (1987-88). [Government of Pakistan (1988)]. The paper will also
show the consequences of different choices in the assessment of the
poverty threshold. In particular, instead of using one rather steep
equivalence scale, as is the common practice in most studies, we will
present poverty statistics based on three different -equivalence scales.
The effects of choices with respect to the concept of resources and the
measure of poverty, will also be examined. After a discussion of the
concept of poverty (Section II), we compare the size and composition of
the poor population using three relative poverty lines in Section III.
In Section IV we present a number of sensitivity analyses, which show
the effects of using different equivalence scales, using different
indicators of household resources (income or total expenditures), and
using measures of poverty different from the Head-count measure. The
poverty incidence differentiated according to household characteristics
is further analysed by means of cross-classification and logit analysis
in Section V. Section VI presents some general conclusions.