An Assessment on Poverty in the Development Programs of the Post Iran-Iraq War (Period 1989-20091)

This paper closely examines “Poverty” during the first four “Development Programs” employed by the Iranian government from 1989 to 2009. After defining poverty and a review of previous studies made on this subject, the authors discuss diverse issues related to measurement of poverty and calculate levels of absolute and relative poverty lines. Additionally, they calculate indices for poverty in this paper. In order to obtain the Absolute Poverty Line (APL), the food poverty line is calculated based on minimum basic needs approach and is then added to the minimum non-food requirements. The result indicates a relative poverty line placed at 66% of the average total household expenditures. The obtained results indicate that the government hasn’t had great success in reducing relative poverty during the period studied. Relative and absolute poverty lines are greater in urban areas than in rural areas. Both relative and absolute indices of poverty were greater in rural areas than in urban areas.