Essays On Poverty Measurement And Trade PDF Download

This dissertation provides a framework for the measurement of poverty dynamics, followed by evaluations of two specific interventions that deal with the dynamic dimension of poverty over different time horizons. The first essay (with Daniel Hojman) introduces a family of multiperiod poverty measures derived from commonly-used static poverty measures. These measure of intertemporal deprivation trade-off poverty stocks and flows, and are consistent with loss aversion. We characterize the partial ranking over income dynamics induced by our measures and use it in two empirical applications using longitudinal household level data. We first compare two decades of income dynamics in the United States and find that income dynamics of 1990's post-welfare reform dominates the income dynamics of the 1980's pre-welfare reform. Next, we compare the contemporary income dynamics of three industrialized countries and conclude that Great Britain dominates Germany and United States during the 1990s, and Germany dominates the United States if poverty stocks are given more importance than poverty flows. The second essay studies the impact of publicly-provided housing units on student achievement in the context of low-income households of Chile. It differs from previous studies evaluating externalities of promoting homeownership by using a regression discontinuity approach in which the underlying assumptions required for a proper identification can be tested. Data taken three to six years after the provision of housing units show evidence of a significant impact of the treatment on the level of education, and most of the effect is concentrated in the population under 25 years old.