Measuring Relative Poverty through Peer Rankings: Evidence from Côte D’Ivoire

We investigate a method for eliciting relative poverty rankings that aggregates partial poverty rankings obtained from multiple individuals. We first demonstrate that the method works in principle, then apply it in urban Côte d’Ivoire. We find that constructed rankings are often incomplete, not always transitive and sometimes contain cycles. Pairwise rankings reported by respondents and constructed aggregate rankings are poorly correlated with measures of poverty obtained from survey data. Measuring relative poverty through peer rankings appears difficult in urban and periurban settings.