1. Calculate the average minimum daily caloric requirement for a relatively poor household living in a rural area of a country with 1 female adult who is 46 years old, 1 male adult who is 50 years old, 2 male children who are 8 and 6 years old and a 5 month old girl. Use the minimum daily caloric requirements by sector and gender table to assist in this calculation.

2. For the previously mentioned household, calculate the food poverty line if the average calories of the food bundle of the relative poor is 1800 and the cost of this bundle is $1.00.

3. Using information derived from question 2, find the total poverty line and the non-food poverty line, when non-food expenditure is on an average 35% of the poverty line value. Also if the non-food expenditure of the poor households is on average 15% of their total expenditures, what is the average food expenditure level of the poor?

4. Consider 6 households with income levels of 2,4,6,8,10,12. If the Food Poverty Line (Zf) =3 and the Non-food Poverty Line (Zn) = 2, what is the Head-count Index (H), Poverty Gap Index (PG), and Squared Poverty Gap Index (SPG). If the income distribution changed to 1,2,3,6,7,10, what are H, PG and SPG?

SUGGESTED READINGS

Babu, S. and W. Reidhead. 2000. Poverty, food security, and nutrition in Central Asia: a case study of the Kyrgyz Republic. Food Policy. Vol. 25 No. 6: 647-660.

Datt, G. D. Jolliffe, and M. Sharma. 1998. A Profile of Poverty in Egypt, 1997. FCND Discussion Paper No. 49. Washington, DC: IFPRI.

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