Being Poor, Feeling Poorer: Combining objective and subjective measures of welfare in Albania

As shown empirically for many transition economies, even small changes in assumptions on economies of size and adult equivalence scales are likely to produce significant changes in the analysis of poverty and its distribution across households and individuals. Since such exercises are then used to orient and prioritize policy actions (e.g. the targeting of scarce social assistance resources) it is important to refine our understanding of the extent to which poverty measures and the resulting profiles are sensitive to specific assumptions. In this paper we investigate how combining objective and subjective measures of welfare can provide insights that are helpful in addressing these questions, particularly with respect to the presence of economies of scale in consumption.