Poverty trends in Turkey

This paper provides new evidence about poverty trends in Turkey between 2003 and 2012 and the factors accounting for them. We give particular attention to issues of statistical inference, and the choice of the poverty line and the poverty measure. Our robust conclusion is that absolute poverty declined rapidly between 2003 and 2008 but fell only slightly between 2008 and 2012. Changes in relative poverty were negligible throughout. Using decomposition methods, we argue that the declines in the absolute poverty rate are largely accounted for by changes in the rate of economic growth rather than by distributional changes or changes in population composition.