On the estimation of fuzzy poverty indices

Abstract

We review the fuzzy approach to poverty measurement by comparing poverty indices using different membership functions proposed in the literature. We put our main focus on the issue of estimation of the mean squared errors of these fuzzy methods showing which indices can be more accurately estimated using sample data. By means of simulations, we also investigate the role of parameters of the membership function when it comes to estimating mean squared errors via a robustness analysis.Comment: 25 pages, 9 tables, 9 figure