Impact Of Agricultural Market Reforms On Smallholder Farmers In ...

make the results from the IFPRI-LARES Small Farmer Survey compatible with those of the ECVR,
we have made three adjustments.
First, the poverty line of the ECVR is adjusted upward to reflect the increase in the cost of
living between the two surveys 20 .
Second, we deduct the rental equivalent from our estimate of household expenditure
because rental equivalent was not included in the ECVR measure of expenditure.
Third, we calculate expenditure per adult equivalent following the practice used by the
ECVR. Adult males are counted as 1.0 adult equivalent, adult females as 0.8, and children
under 15 as 0.5.
Two measures of poverty are calculated: the incidence of poverty and the poverty gap. The
incidence of poverty is simply the percentage of households that fall below the poverty line. The
poverty gap takes into account both the incidence of poverty and the average income of the poor 21 .
Applying the ECVR poverty rate to the data from the IFPRI-LARES Small Farmer Survey, we
estimate that the incidence of poverty among farm households was 21 percent in 1998. The poverty
gap measure is 4%, implying that the average poor households has per capita expenditures 20
percent below the poverty line 22 (see Table 4.1.150).
By comparison, the ECVR estimated that the rural poverty rate was 33 percent in 1994-95. The
two surveys cover similar but not identical populations (farm households vs. rural households) and
there are other differences in methodology, so it would be unwise to place too much confidence in
the comparison. But even if we cannot say that rural poverty has declined by one third, this result
strongly suggests that rural poverty has declined noticeably since 1994-95. This is supported by
the fact that the food share in our survey is lower than in the ECVR (53 percent compared to 69
percent).
20
The price level during the ECVR was taken to be the consumer price index (base December 1991)
for August 1994, the mid-point of the ECVR data collection. The price level for the IFPRI-LARES Small
Farmer Survey was assumed to be the price index for June 1998, the mid-point of the reference period for the
survey. Thus, the ECVR poverty line of 56,500 FCFA/adult equivalent was increased by a factor of
(200.2/142.9) = 1.40, yielding a 1998 poverty line of 79,155 FCFA/adult equivalent.
21
More specifically, the poverty gap is the incidence of poverty multiplied by the average gap between
the poverty line and the average expenditure of the poor expressed as a percentage of the poverty line (see
Foster, Greer, and Thorbecke, 1984).
22
P1 = P0 x the average poverty gap (see footnote 20), so if P0=0.21 and P1=0.04, the average gap is
0.2 or 20 percent.
94