Weighty evidence? Poverty estimation with missing data

Attempts have been made to estimate poverty in India with biased survey data, by adjusting household weights to remove the bias. Based on simulation exercises with artificially contaminated household surveys, Drèze and Somanchi illustrate the limitations of this method. Its ability to correct poverty estimates varies wildly, depending on the nature of the underlying bias, which may be hard to guess – there lies the rub. When the bias changes over time, estimating poverty trends becomes truly pro