Insights and inference for the proportion below the relative poverty line

2019/08/21 by Dilanka S. Dedduwakumara, Dedduwakumara, Dilanka S., Luke A. Prendergast +3
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Social Sciences · #62G05 #Agricultural risk and resilience #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Income, Poverty, and Inequality #Methodology (stat.ME) #Social and Economic Development in India

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1908.08133

openalex publication_date 2019/08/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We examine a commonly used relative poverty measure called the headcount ratio (H_p), defined to be the proportion of incomes falling below the relative poverty line, which is defined to be a fraction p of the median income. We do this by considering this concept for theoretical income populations, and its potential for determining actual changes following transfer of incomes from the wealthy to those whose incomes fall below the relative poverty line. In the process we derive and evaluate the performance of large sample confidence intervals for H_p. Finally, we illustrate the estimators on real income data sets.

Citations

• THE USE OF CONFIDENCE OR FIDUCIAL LIMITS ILLUSTRATED IN THE CASE OF THE BINOMIAL
• Approximate is Better than “Exact” for Interval Estimation of Binomial Proportions

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