Subjective Approach to Poverty: Mugla Case

Abstract

Even though the objective approach dominates the poverty or welfare literature, it does not consider the real feelings of the individiual. To evaluate the poverty perceptions of an individiul and household will provide for presenting a more realistic outcome for the poverty. Despite having many studies relating this issue over the world, there is a few study in Turkey making inference about poverty and welfare based on the subjective welfare evaluations. This study at fiiling this gap aims to analyze the poverty by subjective welfare evaluations rather than objective criterias and to determine the factors affecting the individiual’s subjective economic welfare evaluation by Economic Welfare Approach. In this point, it is an original study as being the first fieldwork in Turkey. Accordingly, 205 households have been visited in the Centre District of Mugla and every couples have been conducted a questionnaire. The data was analyzed by Ordered Logit and Ordered Probit methods. Estimation results indicate that the factors having positive impacts on the individual’s economic welfare evaluations are the increase in the household total expenditure amount, increase in the individual’s education years and health satisfaction, having wealth, taking the life standart of her/his family better or the same as the other reference group and having a job classified as professional.