CONTENTS
Acknowledgments .................................................... iv
1. Introduction ....................................................... 1
2. Poverty Measures Derived from Parameterized Lorenz Curves ................. 3
3. A Recipe for Constructing Poverty Measures .............................. 8
4. Checking for a Valid Lorenz Curve ..................................... 12
5. Choice of the Lorenz Curve Parameterization and the Range of Admissible
Poverty Lines ................................................... 13
6. Estimating Inequality and Elasticities of Poverty Measures ................... 15
7. Poverty Simulations ................................................ 16
References .......................................................... 20
TABLES
1 Size distribution of consumption expenditure in rural India, 1983 ............. 2
2 Poverty measures for alternative parameterizations of the Lorenz curve ........ 6
3 Regression output: General quadratic Lorenz curve for rural India, 1983 ...... 10
4 Poverty measures, elasticities, and related statistics for rural India, 1983 ...... 11
5 Formulas for the first and second derivatives of the Lorenz curve and
the Gini index .................................................. 14
6 Elasticities of poverty measures with respect to the mean and the Gini index ... 16
7 Decomposition of change in poverty in rural India between 1983 and 1986–87 . 19