2014 Training Course - Poverty Measurement and Analysis

Event Date
Location
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Dakar, Senegal

 

overview

This course aims to provide hands-on training in applied poverty analysis. Lecture material will be supplemented with empirical exercises that are designed to illustrate some of the points made and improve your skills in data analysis, using both Stata and Excel.

Interested AGRODEP members must apply by November 16, 2013.


Course Outline

  1. Poverty definitions and reasons for measurement
    • Exercise: Comparisons with multiple indicators
  2. Welfare indicators and comparability
    • Exercise: Weights, samples and populations
  3. Income versus expenditure as an indicator
    • Exercise: Lorenz curves, histograms and densities
  4. Setting poverty lines
    • Exercise: Constructing a reference food bundle
  5. Consistent updating of poverty lines
    • Exercise: Engel curve regressions
  6. Calculation and interpretation of poverty measures
    • Exercise: Budgeting for poverty elimination
  7. Temporal poverty comparisons and sampling errors
    • Testing for differences in poverty rates
  8. Poverty profiles and targeting
    • Exercise: Identifying the characteristics of the poor
  9. Robust poverty comparisons and dominance tests
    • Exercise: Constructing poverty incidence curves
  10. Poverty decompositions
    • Exercise: Using POVCAL to study growth effects
  11. Poverty versus vulnerability

Application Requirements

In order to apply for this course, AGRODEP members must complete the following by November 16, 2013:


Instructor

John Gibson is Professor of Economics at the Waikato Management School. A graduate of Lincoln University, John has a doctorate from Stanford University in the United States. His teaching and research interests are in microeconomics and in the micro econometric aspects of development, labour and the international economy. John is currently a Senior Research Associate at the Motu Economic and Public Policy Research Trust. His other research interests include poverty measurement, where he is a member of an expert group advising the United Nations Statistical Division, the design and analysis of household survey data, and economic development, especially in China and other Asian and Pacific economies.