27.12.2012 Views

The 1995/1996 Household Income, Expenditure - (PDF, 101 mb ...

The 1995/1996 Household Income, Expenditure - (PDF, 101 mb ...

The 1995/1996 Household Income, Expenditure - (PDF, 101 mb ...

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

111.21<br />

gap between the rich and the poor has narrowed.<br />

Conventional economics assumes the universality of poverty,<br />

considering it multi-faceted but typical, and static. "Inequality," too, is<br />

difficult to summarize using unidimensional statistics. Researchers are<br />

handicapped by, at best, shortcomings in the data; at worst by a biased<br />

urban, money-or-Iabor-choice outlook. Poverty is heterodox and fluid,<br />

and poor people face more indignities than the lack of a varied diet or<br />

lower incomes. <strong>The</strong> unequal distribution of economic opportunity is<br />

similarly complex, correlated with many factors which reinforce poverty.<br />

<strong>The</strong> FGT measures and the Gini coefficient are both incapable of<br />

capturing this multiplicity of characteristics. Exactitude in poverty and<br />

rank measurement would be enhanced by better specification of complex<br />

variables and indexes which place more focus on the coping strategies<br />

of the homeless and transient population, and the wealth and earnings<br />

characteristics of the very rich.

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!