Measuring the Poverty Elasticity with Respect to Changes in The Price of Food Groups, The Case study of Iran.

Document Type : Practical

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Abstract

It is evident that food taxes and subsidies, by changing the prices, affect the consumers’ purchasing power and welfare. Therefore, with respect to the “economic alteration scheme”, whose one main point is to target the subsidies, it is necessary to study the effects of all kinds of taxes and subsidies on poverty rate based on different theoretical foundations and models. The aim of this paper, based on Son-Kakwani model, by computing the price elasticity of poverty for taxed and subsidized food commodity groups in the years 2000-2004 and using these elasticities is to determine whether these taxes and subsidies are pro-poor or not. Meanwhile, in the methodology section, it will be shown that the price elasticity of poverty can be computed without having to estimate a poverty function.

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