Abstract

Joint with Gildas Deudibe, Christoph Lakner, Daniel Gerszon Mahler

Comparisons of countries' poverty and inequality is necessary for international targeting of resources and understanding which policies improve living standards. Yet poverty and inequality are measured differently across the world, with some countries using incomes and others, mostly poorer countries, using the value of households' consumption. To make apples-to-apples comparisons, conversions between income and consumption distributions are necessary. We gather data for 64 countries that have both distributions in a given year and test various conversion methods. We select a method that explains more than 90% of the out-of-sample variation, is based on theoretical priors, and is easily implementable. Using this method to convert all distributions to either income or consumption reveals that inequality in Sub-Saharan African may be higher than in any other region. This is in part because income distributions are particularly more unequal than consumption distributions in countries with low GDP per capita, a large agricultural sector, and a small tax base.

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Please note that a networking lunch will be provided prior to the seminar to registered participants (from 12:30 pm). The actual seminar will start at 1 pm.

This seminar is part of the (LIS)2ER Initiative.

Biography

Daniel Gerszon Mahler is a Senior Economist in the Development Data Group, where he is part of the Sustainable Development Statistics team. His areas of expertise are the measurement of poverty, well-being, and justice. Mahler was a core team member of the 2021 World Development Report: Data for Better Lives.