Brazil within Brazil : Testing the Poverty Map Methodology in Minas Gerais
The small-area estimation technique developed for producing poverty maps has been applied in a large number of developing countries. Opportunities to formally test the validity of this approach remain rare due to lack of appropriately detailed data...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2012
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2008/02/9035947/brazil-within-brazil-testing-poverty-map-methodology-minas-gerais http://hdl.handle.net/10986/6575 |
| Summary: | The small-area estimation technique
developed for producing poverty maps has been applied in a
large number of developing countries. Opportunities to
formally test the validity of this approach remain rare due
to lack of appropriately detailed data. This paper compares
a set of predicted welfare estimates based on this
methodology against their true values, in a setting where
these true values are known. A recent study draws on Monte
Carlo evidence to warn that the small-area estimation
methodology could significantly over-state the precision of
local-level estimates of poverty, if underlying assumptions
of spatial homogeneity do not hold. Despite these concerns,
the findings in this paper for the state of Minas Gerais,
Brazil, indicate that the small-area estimation approach is
able to produce estimates of welfare that line up quite
closely to their true values. Although the setting
considered here would seem, a priori, unlikely to meet the
homogeneity conditions that have been argued to be essential
for the method, confidence intervals for the poverty
estimates also appear to be appropriate. However, this
latter conclusion holds only after carefully controlling for
community-level factors that are correlated with household
level welfare. |
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