BY ANDRES OPPENHEIMER
When a few days ago I interviewed the Nobel Prize in Economics 2015 Angus Deaton, I ended up with a simple question: «If you were to give an advice to the countries of Latin America, what would it be?» He replied with just four words: «Improve your statistical systems «.
According to Deaton, 69, the Scottish-American professor at Princeton University who won the prize for his studies on the measurement of poverty, Latin America has one of the worst poverty statistics systems in the world.
Latin American countries should invest more money in improving their statistical systems and adopt the best practices in the world to measure poverty, because to design good public policies, you need to have a good picture of reality, he said.
«One of the problems in Latin America is that most surveys ask people about their income, instead of asking them about their consumption, or how much they spend,» Deaton said.
The Nobel laureate admitted that he is not an expert on Latin America, and he does not know if this technical error is leading to an overestimation or underestimation of poverty in the region. But other experts tell me that it is most likely that the unreliable statistics on poverty in Latin America overstate the number of poor.
According to the latest estimates from the World Bank, poverty in the region fell from 41.4 percent of the population to 25.3 percent in the last decade, which has helped to lift 70 million people out of poverty.
But because surveys of poverty in many Latin American countries asked people about their income, rather than on their spending, the resulting statistics do not take into account free university education, free health services, transportation subsidies and electricity, and government cash grants. If you take these factors into account, the poverty figures would be lower, say many economists.
Source: http://www.elnuevoherald.com/opinion-es/opin-col-blogs/andres-oppenheimer-es/article41337831.html
