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Small-area measures of income poverty

Fenton, Alex (2013) Small-area measures of income poverty. Social policy in a cold climate working paper (SPCCWP01). Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion, The London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.

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Abstract

This paper considers techniques for measuring the prevalence of income poverty within small areas, or “neighbourhoods”, in Britain. The ultimate purpose is applying such statistics to investigating how the micro-spatial distribution of poverty within cities and regions changes over time as a consequence of political decisions and economic events. In the paper, some general criteria for small-area poverty measures are first set out, and two broad methods, poverty proxies and modelled income estimates, are identified. Empirical analyses of the validity and coverage of poverty proxies derived from UK administrative data, such as social security benefit claims, are presented. The concluding section assesses a new poverty proxy that will be used within a wider programme of analysis of the spatial-distributional effects of tax and welfare changes and of economic trends in Britain from 2000 to 2014. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between the proxy values and other local poverty measures in different kinds of places. These suggest that the proxy is an adequate, albeit imperfect, tool for investigating changes in intra-urban distributions of poverty.

Item Type: Monograph (Working Paper)
Official URL: http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/case
Additional Information: © 2013 The Author
Divisions: Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HJ Public Finance
H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform
JEL classification: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I3 - Welfare and Poverty > I32 - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I3 - Welfare and Poverty > I38 - Government Policy; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
R - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics > R2 - Household Analysis > R23 - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population
Date Deposited: 21 Jul 2014 14:41
Last Modified: 15 Sep 2023 23:30
URI: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/58053

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