Subj: Reforming poverty alleviation policies
Date: 03/08/2000
...What strikes me is that in policy debates people look at "reducing
poverty" without looking at how many people die in the interim.
This seems to me the worst flaw in simple economic analysis (Deininger, Dollar) - if the poorest die, the income figures
look better.
So my question is this: even if cost-benefit analysis often focuses on narrow
policy options, is there any reason for the total mix of a government's
policies not to be evaluated on the number of deaths among the most-vulnerable?
Many thanks.
.....
[Note
13 Feb 2007: Deininger
and Dollar were World Bank employees claiming to have looked at the
distribution of income. Strictly
speaking, this confuses “distribution to people” with “distribution among
abstract categories of people with changing membership”. The distribution to people is strictly
speaking unknowable from data which solely refers to people alive at different
times. The problem applies to the use
of economic statistics (statistics about the economy) in general. What is the average income rise among the
poorest? That is unknowable from data
which only refer to living people. In
fact, while an “average pro rata change in income” could in theory [if we
ignore other problems in defining and assessing income] be derived if we did
know who survived, it would not mean very much in human terms, and could not in
itself [again, even if we ignore other philosophical, theoretical and empirical
problems] tell us about aggregate benefits of policies to people.]
..............
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