Poverty and Equity: Measurement, Policy, and Estimation with DAD

This book addresses the understanding and alleviation of poverty, inequality, and inequity using a unique and broad mix of concepts, measurement methods, statistical tools, software, and practical exercises. Part I discusses basic fundamental issues of well-being and poverty measurement. Part II develops an integrated framework for measuring poverty, social welfare, inequality, vertical equity, horizontal equity, and redistribution. Part III presents and develops recent methods for testing the robustness of distributive rankings. Part IV discusses ways of using policy to alleviate poverty, improve welfare, increase equity, and assess the impact of growth. Part V applies the tools to real data.

Most of the book’s measurement and statistical tools have been programmed in DAD, a well-established and widely available free software program that has been tailored especially for income-distribution analysis and is used by scholars, researchers, and analysts in nearly 100 countries worldwide. It requires basic understanding of calculus and statistics.

The authors

Jean-Yves Duclos and Abdelkrim Araar are researchers and teachers in the Department of Economics at Université Laval in Canada, members of the Poverty and Economic Policy (PEP) international research network financed by IDRC, and belong to the Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur le risque, les politiques économiques et l’emploi (CIRPÉE).