Normative Indicators Combining Poverty and Mortality
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World Bank, Washington, DC
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This paper surveys the small branch
of welfare economics that studies indicators combining
poverty and mortality. The paper distinguishes two reasons
for constructing such indicators. The first reason is to
perform multidimensional well-being comparisons. For this
purpose, mortality has (negative) intrinsic value. The key
question relates to the trade-off that the indicator makes
between poverty and mortality, that is, between the quality
and quantity of life. A lifecycle utility approach suggests
expressing this trade-off as the number of years spent in
poverty that is deemed equivalent to one year lost to
mortality. The second reason is to investigate the
instrumental role that selective mortality—the fact that the
poor tend to die earlier—has on the evolution of poverty
measures. Then, the key question is how to define the
counterfactual situation against which the instrumental
impact of mortality is assessed.
Palabras clave
WELFARE ECONOMICS, ECONOMIC INDICATORS, POVERTY INDICATORS, MORTALITY INDICATORS, WELL-BEING COMPARISON, LIFE EXPECTANCY INEQUITY, SELECTIVE MORTALITY, NORMATIVE WELL-BEING INDICATORS, POVERTY MEASUREMENT, MORTALITY PARADOX, POVERTY-ADJUSTED LIFE-EXPECTANCY, MULTIDIMENSIONAL POVERTY