Hello,
Most international researchers use the median to define relative income
poverty lines (or low-income). It is less influenced by outliers (e.g.
very rich people at the top). An example: Eurostat now defines
low-income as below 60% of median DPI. I hope we won't start on
equivalence scales next!
Best regards,
Koen.
Paul Ashton wrote:
>
> Paul Spicker says that
>
> > Child poverty is being measured in relationship to
> >the median income
>
> Being measured by whom though? Not by Gordon Brown when he made that promise
> on child poverty, as David Piachaud has made clear in his New Economy piece
> 'Progress on poverty: Will Blair deliver on eliminating child poverty?':
>
> 'To consider the impact of changes on poverty over the five year period up
> to 2002, it is assumed that the appropriate poverty level is that which the
> Chancellor has used in discussing child poverty, namely a level of half
> average income.'
>
> Similarly John Hills:
>
> 'Official calculations suggest that the measures taken so far ‘will lift
> 1.2 million children out of poverty’, using a poverty line of half average
> income' (Taxation For The Enabling State, CASEpaper 41 August 2000)
>
> Other academics using the half mean income definition include Stephen
> Jenkins:
>
> 'We use two different poverty lines for calculating long-range poverty
> trends: half contemporary mean income and half 1991 mean income. These are
> similar to those employed in the official British low income statistics',
> Poverty among british children: chronic or transitory? December 1999),
>
> and Francesco Devicienti
>
> 'Reflecting previous UK research, I have initially considered two
> alternative definitions for the low income cut-off: half wave 1 mean income
> is chosen as an absolute (fixed in real terms) poverty line, while half
> contemporaneous mean income is taken as a relative poverty line.', Poverty
> persistence in Britain: a multivariate analysis using the BHPS, 1991-1997,
> Working Paper 2001-02 12 September 2000.
>
> As John Veit-Wilson pointed out in his recent memo to the Select Committee
> on Social Security, both the half average income and the 60% of median
> concept of poverty is, in reality, just a measure of unequal incomes:
>
> 'while the government admits that "low income is an important aspect of
> poverty", at present it has no idea of what income level would be needed to
> abolish poverty in households containing children. Its measure of poverty
> for this purpose, the statistics of Households Below Average Income (HBAI)
> is acknowledged to be no more than a measure of unequal income and not of
> adequate income, and no one knows if half the mean or 60 per cent of the
> median is too high, too low or about right to achieve the intended
> objective of preventing deprivations and social exclusions.'
>
> Paul A
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