Abstract

Since 2007, the High Commission for Planning has conducted several socio-economic surveys to understand the lived experiences of Moroccan households based on their perceptions, their social representations and their concerns. The statistics obtained using spontaneous declarations have been taken up by a number of national and international organizations that are interested in the population's well-being in its twofold objective and subjective components, particularly poverty in its subjective form.
In order to contextualize these declarations according to the social realities of households and their social environment, some studies have been carried out to link the actual standard of living to the desired one and to measure two forms of subjective poverty, absolute and relative, with reference to appropriate thresholds.
Based on this new conceptual tool, and using Moroccan data, we show that absolute measures of welfare disparities are significantly correlated with perceptions of deprivation and subjective poverty, and thus more suitable in explaining the highlighted differences between objective and subjective measures of poverty. Our hypothesis is that the measurement of subjective poverty, in its absolute and relative forms, can be linked to appropriate thresholds. This form of poverty is strongly correlated with households' perceptions of their socioeconomic status.
In this regard, it emerges that the absolute subjective poverty rate is 14% in 2014 instead of 45% when referring to the direct approach based on self-identification of belonging to the poor class. In 2007, these rates were 34% and 42% respectively. As for relative subjective poverty, it increased from 30% in 2007 to 42% in 2014. This last result highlights the impact of perceived inequality on subjective perceptions of poverty. Tocqueville's paradox shows that the high level of this form of poverty is globally due to social comparisons, which often explain negative perceptions of household well-being.