Endogenous food basket for CABA

Abstract

The official body of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (CABA) considers as poor any person who cannot have access to a basket of goods and services elaborated based on the uses and customs. The food basket that is taken as reference, however, exceeds the nutrients necessary to survive and prevent basic diseases, hence not really providing an idea of poverty or extreme poverty. This paper suggests an alternative method to measure this. We estimate the food component of the basic basket for the city for the last 5 months of 2020, following the linear programming proposed by Stigler (1945) and later used by Allen (2017) to measure basic needs. We estimate that the resulting basic diet costs 20% of what the official one does, if we incorporate the nutritional requirements suggested by the official method. We also estimate the basic diet with the more basic requirements suggested by Allen; this basket costs 12% of what the official one does and it is so basic that it is composed of 70% wheat flour. These baskets would imply that very few people would be considered extremely poor in CABA.