Towards a long term series of income poverty.

The 'basket' issue

Abstract

In 2016, Argentina’s National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC) changed the official methodology used to estimate income poverty. As a consequence, recent poverty rates cannot be compared to those published in the past. To solve this problem, some researchers decided to keep on using the previous methodology and some others chose to rebuild the headcount time series by applying the new methodology. Both solutions, based on the approach of absolute poverty, use a basket whose composition remains unchanged. That is why in this paper we suggest that some relative aspects should be considered, letting the composition of the basket also change through time. So, we use the linear interpolation method in order to splice basic basket series. When poverty rates are calculated with these baskets, the long-term trend suggests a deterioration of the living conditions in the Greater Buenos Aires during the period 1974-2016, although there were some improvement processes, such as that witnessed in the years after the fall of the convertibility regime.