Counting and multidimensional poverty measurement

Working paper

This paper proposes a new methodology for multidimensional poverty measurement consisting of an identification method ρκ that extends traditional approaches, and a class of poverty measures Mα that satisfies several desirable properties including decomposability. Our identification step employs two forms of cutoff: one within each dimension and a second across dimensions that identifies the poor by counting their deprivations. We aggregate using Foster-Greer-Thorbecke measures adjusted for multidimensionality. Our adjusted headcount ratio is well suited for use with ordinal data. Examples from Indonesia and the US illustrate our methodology.

Authors: Alkire, S; Foster, J

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Reviewed (other)
• Publisher: Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI)
• Series: OPHI working paper
• Publication date: 2007-01-01
• Edition: Publisher's version
• ISSN: 2040-8188
• Paper number: 07
• ISBN: 9781907194009
• Keywords: ophi; freedom; relative weights; decomposability; ordinal; poverty indices; identification; poverty measurement; axiomatic structure; deprivation; capability approach; FGT measures; multidimensional poverty; cardinal