摘要：Assessment of the welfare impacts of low-frequency events, such asmacroeconomic crises and stabilizations, are often confounded by sampling andnonsampling errors that generate fluctuations in household survey-based welfareindicators; they are also limited by our ability to explain fluctuations in terms of otheravailable data. Basing policy on short-term movements in welfare indicators can thusbe hazardous. There was a sharp increase in India's poverty measures in the aftermathof the mid-1991 crisis and the ensuing stabilization reforms. However, only one-tenthof the increase in measured poverty is explicable in terms of the variables one wouldexpect to transmit the shock. Poverty measures soon returned to their pre-reformlevels, belying the notion of a reforms-induced structural break.
