Urban Rural Poverty Comparisons in Tunisia: A Robust Statistical Approach

Poverty analysis conducted in Tunisia so far depends heavily upon the choice of poverty lines. The latter are usually constructed by considering a fraction of median incomes. This yields large differentials between urban and rural lines up to a factor 2 leading to the conclusion that the intensity of poverty is more important in the urban area. The policy of poverty alleviation in Tunisia is highly influenced by this result which has no theoretical foundations. In this paper we propose to adopt a more sophisticated approach based on the determination of regional basic needs in order to estimate the differential between urban and rural lines. In order to get stable results we also propose to adopt a robust statistical approach to estimation and testing. This will then enable us to analyze poverty in Tunisia in a robust manner and find that poverty is actually a rural phenomenon.