Estimating poverty and inequality in the absence of consumption data: an application to the Middle East and North Africa

Abstract

Measures of consumption and poverty are critical metrics of the wellbeing of individuals, their households, communities, and countries. Collecting data on consumption and poverty is challenging and costly, and therefore these measures are only infrequently available in survey data. In this paper, we demonstrate how information commonly available in household surveys can be used to impute consumption, even recovering the original variance, which is crucial for assessments of poverty and inequality. Our application adds consumption estimates to the publicly available Labor Market Panel Surveys for Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia, which can act as a valuable resource for researchers interested in the intersection of inequality, poverty, and a host of labor market behaviors in the Middle East and North Africa.