Some Methodological Issues in the Implementation of Subjective Poverty Definitions

This paper discusses an investigation of the effects of systematic underreporting of income and of sample selectivity on the estimated levels of two subjective definitions of poverty: the so-called subjective poverty line and the Leyden poverty line. Both turn out to have substantially biasing effects. We present methods to remedy the biases. The resulting adjusted poverty lines prove to be quite accurate. Furthermore, we make suggestions for the design of questionnaires that are used in the surveys on which these poverty definitions are based.