Poverty dynamics in Tanzania, 2014–2020:A validation of synthetic panel bootstrap point estimates

This paper implements a validation analysis of a refinement to the synthetic panel method, which yields bootstrap point estimates of poverty transitions. This Bayesian-inspired refinement uses bootstrap samples of household income (and consumption expenditure) correlation coefficients observed in available panel surveys to proxy for correlations over time in countries where no panel surveys are available. This allows more precise estimation of poverty dynamics based on repeated cross-sectional surveys.

This validation analysis uses actual panel data from the Tanzania National Panel Survey (Waves 4 and 5) and finds that these four standard deviation bands cover true poverty transition estimates in about nine out of twelve cases.

Stata do-file to download and use

Dataset of correlation coefficients

Available at: https://doi.org/10.55158/DEEPWP41