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Abstract

Vol. 53, No. 1, pp. 24-39 (2002)

“Characteristics of Dynamic Poverty in the North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan”
Takashi Kurosaki (The Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University)

This paper quantitatively investigates how vulnerable to risk low income households are which attributes of households are associated with the vulnerability. The analytical framework is based on poverty transition matrix and the decomposition of Foster-Greer-Thorbecke poverty measures into chronic and transient elements. Empirical results based on a two-period panel dataset collected from the North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan, show that, first, sample households are subject to high transient poverty in terms of income but the income variability is transferred to consumption variability only partially due to ex post risk-coping mechanisms; second, several households, who are excluded from these mechanisms, are prone to high risk of a substantial fall in consumption and a drastic cut in children's school enrollment ; third, the dynamically vulnerable group includes female-headed households and those households with no land and no stable non-farm employment.