Stephan Klasen – författare

This impressive research collection discusses the most important contributions by some of the leading scholars in the field of poverty measurement. It analyses what constitutes poverty and associated poverty measures, as well as conceptual and empirical approaches to set poverty lines for both national and international settings. The research collection also discusses national and international income poverty measures, multidimensional poverty indices, and ways to capture poverty dynamics.

Economists have had much to say about the impact of economic policies on growth, but little on their distributional consequences and poverty impact. The reorientation of development policy from structural adjustment to poverty reduction as the central objective thus called for new tools to examine distributional change. This book analyzes the poverty and distributional impact of policy changes and external shocks in three case studies from Latin America: Trade liberalization in Colombia and Brazil, and the gas boom in Bolivia. It uses an innovative approach that combines computable general equilibrium and microsimulation models. The country applications illustrate that distributional consequences depend very much on the nature of the shock or policy change as well as the characteristics of the country in question. The book issues a warning against policy prescriptions being based on oversimplifying assumptions and models.

The causes and consequences of high inequality in incomes, assets, and many aspects of well-being in Latin America have recently (re-)emerged as a central research and policy issue. However, many open questions remain that will be dealt with in the contributions to this volume. First, the linkages between growth, inequality, and poverty in Latin America need further clarification. More analyses at the country and even sub-national level are required to understand these complex relationships and their most important determinants. Of particular relevance is to examine these relationships in the Latin American context of high economic instability with recurrent economic and financial crises, particularly in the 1990s. Secondly, measuring and addressing poverty remains a critical research area, in particular non-monetary including subjective indicators of well-being often tell a different story that needs to be considered when analyzing poverty trends and determinants. Lastly, the poverty/inequality issues need to be considered in an economic environment, where trade, migration, and economic integration are of particular importance. Thus the role of trade and migration in generating, sustaining, or reducing inequalities between and within countries is an area that requires further analysis.