Vulnerability to poverty in select Central Asian Countries

Abstract

Economists have long recognized that a household's sense of well-being depends not just on its average income or expenditures, but also on the risks it faces. Hence vulnerability is a more satisfactory measure of welfare than poverty. In this paper we measure the extent of vulnerability as expected poverty, examine the importance of its determinants in the following four Central Asian countries: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. We find that the fractions of the populations of these countries facing the risk of poverty are considerably different from those observed to be poor. Moreover, the distribution of vulnerability across different segments of the population can differ significantly from the distribution of poverty. In addition, there is a sizable fraction of the population in these countries who were observed to be non-poor but are estimated. Show more