pov: Poverty Measures
In ineq: Measuring Inequality, Concentration, and Poverty

Description Usage Arguments Details Value References See Also Examples

computes the poverty of an (income) vector according to the specified poverty measure

pov(x, k, parameter = NULL, type = c("Watts", "Sen", "SST", "Foster"), na.rm = TRUE)

Watts(x, k, na.rm = TRUE)
Sen(x, k, na.rm = TRUE)
SST(x, k, na.rm = TRUE)
Foster(x, k, parameter = 1, na.rm = TRUE)

`x`	a vector containing at least non-negative elements
`k`	a constant giving the absolute poverty line
`parameter`	parameter of the poverty measure (if set to `NULL` the default parameter of the respective measure is used)
`type`	character string giving the measure used to compute poverty coefficient must be one of the strings in the default argument. Defaults to "Watts".
`na.rm`	logical. Should missing values (`NA`s) be removed prior to computations? If set to `FALSE` the computations yield `NA`.

pov is just a wrapper for the poverty measures of Watts, Sen, SST, and Foster (Foster / Greer / Thorbecke). If parameter is set to NULL the default from the respective function is used.

Foster gives for parameter 1 the headcount ratio and for parameter 2 the poverty gap ratio.

the value of the poverty measure

Foster, J. E. (1984). On Economic Poverty: A Survey of Aggregate Measures. Advances in Econometrics, 3, 215–251.

Shorroks, A. F. (1995). Revisiting the Sen Poverty Index. Econometrica, 63(5), 1225–1230.

Zheng, B. (1997). Aggregate Poverty Measures. Journal of Economic Surveys, 11, 123–162.

ineq, conc

# generate vectors (of incomes)
x <- c(541, 1463, 2445, 3438, 4437, 5401, 6392, 8304, 11904, 22261)
y <- c(841, 2063, 2445, 3438, 4437, 5401, 6392, 8304, 11304, 21961)
# compute Watts index with poverty line 2000
pov(x, 2000)
pov(y, 2000)
# compute headcount ratio with poverty line 2000
pov(x, 2000, parameter=1, type="Foster")
pov(y, 2000, parameter=1, type="Foster")