pov {ineq}

Poverty Measures

Description

computes the poverty of an (income) vector according to the specified poverty measure

Usage

pov(x, k, parameter = NULL, type = c("Watts", "Sen", "SST", "Foster"), na.rm = TRUE)

Watts(x, k, na.rm = TRUE)
Sen(x, k, na.rm = TRUE)
SST(x, k, na.rm = TRUE)
Foster(x, k, parameter = 1, na.rm = TRUE)

Arguments

x

a vector containing at least non-negative elements

k

a constant giving the absolute poverty line

parameter

parameter of the poverty measure (if set to NULL the default parameter of the respective measure is used)

type

character string giving the measure used to compute poverty coefficient must be one of the strings in the default argument. Defaults to "Watts".

na.rm

logical. Should missing values (NAs) be removed prior to computations? If set to FALSE the computations yield NA.

Details

pov is just a wrapper for the poverty measures of Watts, Sen, SST, and Foster (Foster / Greer / Thorbecke). If parameter is set to NULL the default from the respective function is used.

Foster gives for parameter 1 the headcount ratio and for parameter 2 the poverty gap ratio.

Value

the value of the poverty measure

References

Foster, J. E. (1984). On Economic Poverty: A Survey of Aggregate Measures. Advances in Econometrics, 3, 215–251.

Shorroks, A. F. (1995). Revisiting the Sen Poverty Index. Econometrica, 63(5), 1225–1230.

Zheng, B. (1997). Aggregate Poverty Measures. Journal of Economic Surveys, 11, 123–162.

See Also

ineq, conc

Examples

# generate vectors (of incomes)
x <- c(541, 1463, 2445, 3438, 4437, 5401, 6392, 8304, 11904, 22261)
y <- c(841, 2063, 2445, 3438, 4437, 5401, 6392, 8304, 11304, 21961)
# compute Watts index with poverty line 2000
pov(x, 2000)
pov(y, 2000)
# compute headcount ratio with poverty line 2000
pov(x, 2000, parameter=1, type="Foster")
pov(y, 2000, parameter=1, type="Foster")