Poverty Is No Crime: Measuring Poverty in Russian Regions (стр. 2 )

Female-headed households are doing not worse in the majority of the regions, with the exceptions being Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tatarstan and Murmansk where the chances of female-headed household to get into deeper poverty are higher than for households with male adult members. Female-headed households are doing relatively better in Pskov region.

Having a family member in bad health is statistically significant in 30% of the regions: having a family member in bad health increases chances to be in deeper poverty. For the rest of the regions the factor is not significant.

Living in rural areas is a factor that increases chances of getting into deeper poverty in half of the regions.

5. Conclusions

Regions seem to not that much heterogeneous as one could have expected. There is some regional variation in the determinants of poverty rate, severity of poverty and deepness of poverty, and in the magnitude of the influence in particular. At the same, the core list of significant factors determining poverty indicators is the same for the majority of the regions. This finding points to the fact that regional heterogeneity is not that large.

There are interesting insights in regional-specific patterns of poverty. Very high return on being employed in Moscow in terms of poverty reduction accompanied by virtually no returns to a higher education level of education of a job holder points to the fact that the labor market in Moscow provides jobs with relatively good pay. This is in contrast to other regions where no such pattern is observed. There is unexpectedly positive return to having a job in state sector in Pskov, Murmansk and Voronezh oblasts and Dagestan Republic which prompts for the special role of the budget sector on the local labor markets.

The coincidence of the core factors that determine the three discussed poverty measures – incidence of poverty, severity of poverty, and deepness of poverty - conforms with other studies on poverty in Russia that conclude that there are no major differences in determinants of transitory or persistent poverty. In our case there are no major differences in the factors that determine incidence of poverty and the amount of resources lacking to get out of poverty (severity of poverty ad deepness of poverty).

6. REFERENCES

Korinek, Anton, Johan A. Mistiaen, and Martin Ravallion (2005), “Survey Nonresponse and the Distribution of Income” – World bank Policy Research Working Paper 3543, March 2005

Deaton, Angus S. (2004), “Measuring Poverty in a Growing World”, - NBER Working Paper 9822

Deaton, Angus S. (2003), “Health, Inequality, and Economic Development”, - Journal of Economic Literature, Marh 2003, vol.41, issue 1, pp.113-158

Deaton, Angus S., and Darren Lubotsky (2002), “Mortality, Inequality and Race in American Cities and States”, - Social Science and Medicine, Vol.56, no.6, pp.

Deaton, Angus S., and Salman Zaidi (2002), “Guidelines for Constructing Consumption Aggregates for Welfare Analysis”, - Living Standards Measurement Study Working Paper,135, vol.104, pp. xi

Deaton, Angus S. (2001), “Mortality, Income and Income Inequality Over Time in Britain and the United States”, - Journal of Economic Literature, March 2003, vol.41, issue 1, pp.113-158

Deaton, Angus S. (2001), “Counting the World’s Poor: Problems and Possible Solutions”, - World Bank Research Observer, Fall 2001, vol.16, issue 2, pp.125-147

Deaton, Angus S., and Christina H. Paxson (1998), “Aging and Inequality in Income and Health”, - American Economic Review, Vol.88, no.2, pp.248-53

Deaton, Angus S., and John Muellbauer (1986), “On Measuring Child Costs: With Applications to Poor Countries”, - Journal of Political Economy, Vol.94, no.4, pp.720-44

Förster, Michael, David Jesuit and Timothy Smeeding (2002) “Regional Poverty and Income Inequality in Central and Eastern Europe: Evidence from the Luxembourg Income Study” - Luxembourg Income Study Working Paper No. 324

Jesuit, David, Lee Rainwater and Timothy Smeeding (2002), “Regional Poverty within the Rich Countries”- Luxembourg Income Study Working Paper No. 318

Kolenikov, Stanislav, and Anthony Shorrocks (2005), “A Decomposition Analysis of Regional Poverty in Russia”, - Review of Development, 9(1), 25-46, 2005

Kolenikov, Stanislav, and Anthony Shorrocks (2001), “Regional poverty in Russia: Is it geography or economics that matter?”, - mimeo

Russian Federation: Reducing Poverty through Growth and Social Policy Reform (2005) Poverty Assessment Report on Russia No.28923, Washington D. C.: World Bank

Sen, Amartya K.(1976) “Poverty: An Ordinal Approach to Measurement.” Econometrica, 44(2): 219-31.

7. APPENDIX.

Table 1. Poverty rate: total and in subgroups (all 46 regions).

	Poverty rate	Severity	Number of observations
Total	48.5	0.083	40087
HH with no children	43.9	0.068	27004
HH with 1 child	54.0	0.097	9243
HH with 2 children	65.1	0.144	3271
HH with 3 and more children	81.7	0.250	569
HH with pensioners only	48.4	0.064	10475
Rural areas	53.8	0.108	17001
Highest level of education in HH
Primary general(8 or less)	56.1	0.102	6921
Secondary general	59.6	0.127	5640
Primary professional	58.5	0.117	3701
Secondary professional	49.8	0.079	12118
Higher professional	34.0	0.044	11707
HH involved in agriculture	46.2	0.075	21470
HH with no males of working age	48.7	0.074	16040
HH with members with bad health	56.8	0.099	10777

	1$ poverty	2$ poverty	Number of observations
	Poverty rate	Severity	Poverty rate	Severity
Total	12.7	0.016	47.4	0.083	40087
HH with no children	9.6	0.012	43.1	0.067	27004
HH with 1 child	15.4	0.018	52.3	0.096	9243
HH with 2 children	24.6	0.033	64.1	0.146	3271
HH with 3 and more children	46.4	0.076	80.0	0.248	569
HH with pensioners only	8.3	0.008	48.0	0.063	10475
Rural areas	17.6	0.024	54.4	0.109	17001
Highest level of education in HH
Primary general(8 or less)	15.7	0.022	56.6	0.104	6921
Secondary general	21.1	0.031	59.3	0.128	5640
Primary professional	18.1	0.026	57.0	0.177	3701
Secondary professional	11.6	0.012	48.0	0.140	12118
Higher professional	6.2	0.006	32.7	0.108	11707
HH involved in agriculture	12.4	0.013	47.2	0.079	21470
HH with no males of working age	10.4	0.062	47.9	0.072	16040
HH with members with bad health	14.9	0.080	57.0	0.099	10777

Table 2a 1$ and 2$ poverty rates.
Table 2b. 1$ and 2$ poverty rates corrected for regional prices