# Income Distribution Dependence of Poverty Measure: A Theoretical Analysis

Source: [Income Distribution Dependence of Poverty Measure: A Theoretical Analysis](<https://www.sota2.com/research/paper/68fa31e61e209131ce883596>)

Collection index: [llms.txt](<https://www.sota2.com/research/llms.txt>)

Data updated: 2025-10-24T19:10:38.962Z

Authors: Amit K Chattopadhyay, Sushanta K Mallick

Published: 2005-07-06T18:22:51.000Z

## Abstract

With a new deprivation (or poverty) function, in this paper, we theoretically study the changes in poverty with respect to the \`global' mean and variance of the income distribution using Indian survey data. We show that when the income obeys a log-normal distribution, a rising mean income generally indicates a reduction in poverty while an increase in the variance of the income distribution increases poverty. This altruistic view for a developing economy, however, is not tenable anymore once the poverty index is found to follow a pareto distribution. Here although a rising mean income indicates a reduction in poverty, due to the presence of an inflexion point in the poverty function, there is a critical value of the variance below which poverty decreases with increasing variance while beyond this value, poverty undergoes a steep increase followed by a decrease with respect to higher variance. Following these results, we make quantitative predictions to correlate a developing with a developed economy.

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## Original sources and implementation

[Original paper](<https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0507035>)

[PDF](<https://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0507035.pdf>)