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International seminar on poverty measurement

INSEE organised from 30 November to 2 December in Paris a seminar on poverty measurement, addressed to statistical Institutes of beneficiary countries of the TACIS programme (CIS and Mongolia).
This seminar was financed mainly by a Eurostat grant and additionally by ADETEF.
It brought together 30 participants from 11 CIS countries(*) and Mongolia, representatives from Poland and Eurostat and about fifteen French participants from INSEE, INED and CREST.

The seminar was held in five sessions.

In the first one, representatives of the Directorate of demographic and social statistics in INSEE and of the Research Centre on Economy and Statistics (CREST) presented methodological approaches followed in France to measure poverty, results of studies and international comparisons carried out with six other countries.
During the three following sessions, participants from TACIS countries, split into big geographical areas (Caucasus, Europe and Central Asia) presented their experience.
The last session was devoted to extensions of studies on poverty: analysis of social exclusion in Poland, INSEE studies on homeless people and on links between illiteracy and social exclusion. The seminar ended with a Eurostat contribution on European poverty indicators and the presentation of work accomplished in the Rio Group, created by the UN, on poverty statistics.

Presentations and discussions allowed to compare the different approaches used: absolute-relative, monetary-non monetary, subjective… TACIS countries have often used approaches in term of absolute poverty, inherited from the Soviet period or recommended by the World Bank, but methods are being diversified. Discussions showed that a unique approach cannot be favoured and that methods and tools have to be combined in order to develop multidimensional analyses. Several countries highlighted the need to take into account regional disparity, sometimes huge. The complex issue of the use of this work for social policy implementation was also discussed. Finally, discussions on international comparisons stressed the need to question the relevance of tools they are based on.

(*) Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan

Papers in English and Russian

Session 1

  • Methodology of poverty measurement

    Daniel Verger

    English (.PDF - 110 kB)

    Russian (.PDF - 260 kB)

  • Measures of poverty in France

    Pascal Chevalier

    English (.PDF - 180 kB)

    Russian (.PDF - 420 kB)

  • International comparisons of poverty

    Nicolas Herpin & Fabien Dell

    English (.PDF - 70 kB)

    Russian (.PDF - 290 kB)

  • Perception of poverty in Europe

    Serge Paugam

    English (.PDF - 230 kB)

    Russian (.PDF - 400 kB)

Session 2

Session 3

Session 4

Session 5