IFS/STICERD/UCL Development Work in Progress Seminar
The missing poor
Torsten Figueiredo Walter (NYU Abu Dhabi)
Thursday 11 December 2025 14:00 - 15:00
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About this event
Population censuses constitute the basis of public resource allocation and political representation in many countries. This paper shows that census forms commonly generate incentives for enumerators to disproportionately omit members of larger households. Using microdata from 254 censuses, we estimate that this leads to undercounting in 60% of censuses. Omission is concentrated in poor countries where 0.6% of the population is missing. Within countries, poor households are missing three times as many members as rich ones, leading to larger undercounts in poorer regions. We illustrate how this translates into systematic underfunding of public services and political underrepresentation in poor regions.
This seminar series is jointly organized by the IFS, STICERD, and UCL.
IFS/STICERD/UCL Development Economics Work In Progress seminars are held on Thursdays in term time at 14:00-15:00, at the IFS, unless specified otherwise.
Seminar organisers: Oriana Bandiera (STICERD, LSE), Imran Rasul (UCL), Britta Augsburg (IFS) and Jonathan Weigel (LSE).
For further information please contact Britta Augsburg: britta_a@ifs.org.uk.
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