Working Paper
Poverty, Vulnerability, and Reference Dependent Utility

In this paper we argue that the recent evidence on individuals’ decision making is of high relevance for the measurement of poverty when switching from a static and certain to a dynamic and uncertain framework. The numerous proposed measures of multi-period poverty and vulnerability have until now not taken into account the insights from behavioural economics. Building on reference dependent utility models we propose a new measure of both (perceived) multi-period poverty and vulnerability, where the poverty status of an individual is not only a function of (expected) consumption levels but also of (expected) losses and gains in consumption. We demonstrate the implications of the proposed measures with a small illustrative example.