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Bibliothèque Can Subjective Questions on Economic Welfare Be Trusted? Evidence for Three Developing Countries

Can Subjective Questions on Economic Welfare Be Trusted? Evidence for Three Developing Countries

Can Subjective Questions on Economic Welfare Be Trusted? Evidence for Three Developing Countries

Resource information

Date of publication
Février 2014
Resource Language
ISBN / Resource ID
oai:openknowledge.worldbank.org:10986/16942

While self-assessments of welfare have
become popular for measuring poverty and estimating welfare
effects, the methods can be deceptive given systematic
heterogeneity in respondents' scales. Little is known
about this problem. This study uses specially-designed
surveys in three countries, Tajikistan, Guatemala, and
Tanzania, to study scale heterogeneity. Respondents were
asked to score stylized vignettes, as well as their own
household. Diverse scales are in evidence, casting
considerable doubt on the meaning of widely-used summary
measures such as subjective poverty rates. Nonetheless,
under the identifying assumptions of the study, only small
biases are induced in the coefficients on widely-used
regressors for subjective poverty and welfare.

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Authors and Publishers

Author(s), editor(s), contributor(s)

Ravallion, Martin
Himelein, Kristen
Beegle, Kathleen

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