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Social Indicators Research

, Volume 142, Issue 1, pp 25–64 | Cite as

Dynamics of Multidimensional Poverty and Uni-dimensional Income Poverty: An Evidence of Stability Analysis from China

  • Sabina Alkire
  • Yingfeng FangEmail author
Article
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Abstract

In this paper, we construct an illustrative multidimensional poverty index for China and compare it with income poverty using the panel data from multiple waves of the China Health and Nutrition Survey. We use first order stochastic dominance method and regression analysis to test the stability of multidimensional poverty measures and probe the often-observed mis-match between multidimensional measures and income measures. We find as expected that China’s multidimensional poverty is significantly higher in rural areas and in the less developed western provinces. But relative to the income poverty, the multidimensional poverty is less volatile. Also, the ranking of provinces by income and multidimensional poverty varies. The multidimensional poverty measures are somewhat sensitive to the large change of weight, but if we control the indicators’ weight, then the multidimensional poverty measures are stable to a change of indicators.

Keywords

Poverty measurement Multidimensional poverty Stability Weight Robustness tests Mis-match 

JEL Classification

I3 I32 O1 D63 
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Notes

Acknowledgements

Funding was provided by the Research project in Humanities and Social Sciences by the Ministry of Education of China (Grant No. 14YJC790026).

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© Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2018

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Oxford Poverty and Human Development InitiativeUniversity of OxfordOxfordUK
  2. 2.Economics and Management SchoolWuhan UniversityWuhanChina

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