Robust Comparisons of Malnutrition in Developing Countries
利用人口与健康调查数据，以人体测量营养指标替代收入或支出，进行跨国和跨期福利比较，发现饥饿人口比例结果稳健，但营养不良变化对贫困线选择敏感。
Abstract We use Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to make international and inter‐temporal welfare comparisons. While most poverty analyses rely on expenditures or income, we use anthropometric measures of nutrition as indicators of living standards. The advantages are that we observe individual—not household—well‐being, deflators and exchange rates are unnecessary, and measurement techniques are similar across surveys. We test the robustness of the headcount results, and find that applying higher order Foster‐Greer‐Thorbecke poverty measures adds little information; although stochastic dominance testing of nutrition distributions reveals that changes in malnutrition are sensitive to the choice of the “nutrition poverty line”.