ROBUST ESTIMATOR FOR RELATIVE POVERTY LINE WITH APPLICATION TO EGYPT

The concept of poverty has varied over time as a result of the interrelated nature of poverty. By the reference to the definition of the World Bank (1990), poverty is the inability to achieve the minimum standard of living, where the standard of living is divided into two parts: the expenditure necessary to meet the basic needs (food, clothing, ...) and spending necessary to participate in the daily life of the community. The first part of the standard of living is measurable while the second part is not measurable where it is not clear or undetermined. Thus, the poverty line can be defined as the minimum spending or consumption (or income) required meeting the basic needs, Ravallion [21]. In this paper, the geometric mean is presented as a robust measure of average income than the mean and the median especially in cases of changing income, low inequality and heavy tail distributions. Also, the geometric mean is used to estimate the relative poverty line based on a real data set collected in Egypt by (CAPMAS) from 2004/2005 to 2014/2015.