Poverty is a paradoxical state. Recognizable in the eld for any sensitive observer who travels in remote rural areas and urban slums and meets marginalized people in a given society, poverty still remains a challenge to conceptual formalization and to measurement that is consistent with such formalization. The analysis of poverty is multidisciplinary. It goes from ethics to economics, from political science to human biology, and any type of measurement rests on mathematics. Moreover, poverty is multifaceted according to the types of deprivation, and it is also gender and age speci c. A vector of variables is required, which raises a substantial problem for individual and group comparisons necessary to equity analysis. Multidimension- ity also complicates the aggregation necessary to perform the ef ciency analysis of policies. In the case of income poverty, these two problems, equity and ef ciency, have bene ted from very signi cant progress in the eld of economics. Similar achievements are still to come in the area of multidimensional poverty. Within this general background, this book has a very modest and narrow-scoped objective. It proposes an operational methodology for measuring multidimensional poverty, independent from the conceptual origin, the size and the qualitative as well as the quantitative nature of the primary indicators used to describe the poverty of an individual, a household or a sociodemographic entity.

Multidimensional poverty measurement and analysis is evolving rapidly. Notably, it has informed the publication of the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) estimates in the Human Development Reports of the United Nations Development Programme since 2010, and the release of national poverty measures in Mexico, Colombia, Bhutan, the Philippines and Chile. The academic response has been similarly swift, with related articles published in both theoretical and applied journals. The high and insistent demand for in-depth and precise accounts of multidimensional poverty measurement motivates this book, which is aimed at graduate students in quantitative social sciences, researchers of poverty measurement, and technical staff in governments and international agencies who create multidimensional poverty measures. The book is organized into four elements. The first introduces the framework for multidimensional measurement and provides a lucid overview of a range of multidimensional techniques and the problems each can address. The second part gives a synthetic introduction of 'counting' approaches to multidimensional poverty measurement and provides an in-depth account of the counting multidimensional poverty measurement methodology developed by Alkire and Foster, which is a straightforward extension of the well-known Foster-Greer-Thorbecke poverty measures that had a significant and lasting impact on income poverty measurement. The final two parts deal with the pre-estimation issues such as normative choices and distinctive empirical techniques used in measure design, and the post-estimation issues such as robustness tests, statistical inferences, comparisons over time, and assessments of inequality among the poor.

Multidimensional approaches have increasingly been used to understand poverty, but have yet to be fully operationalized. This methodical and important book uses factor analysis and structural equations modelling to develop a multidimensional framework that integrates capability and social inclusion as additional poverty indicators. The empirical relevance of this methodological contribution is demonstrated through in-depth case studies of the United States and Nepal.

This book investigates and documents multidimensional poverty in the United States and identifies patterns and relationships that contribute to the development of a more complete understanding of the incidence and intensity of deprivation. The first part introduces multidimensional poverty and provides a rationale for viewing poverty through a lens of multiple deprivations. It discusses how the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) compares to more narrowly-focused, income-based poverty measures and emphasizes its usefulness and applicability for the formulation of related, welfare-enhancing public policies. The second part documents multidimensional poverty incidence, intensity, and corresponding MPI values at the aggregate level of detail, for various demographic cohorts, and across geographic locales. The book then presents results from an empirical analysis that identifies the determinants of multidimensional poverty incidence and of individual deprivation scores. The third part consists of three studies of multidimensional poverty, examining the effect of the Affordable Care Act on multidimensional poverty incidence and intensity, variation in multidimensional poverty across native- and foreign-born residents (and across immigrants’ home countries) of the US, and variation in the respective indicators that contribute to multidimensional poverty across the life cycle. The book closes with two chapters. The first relays the findings of counterfactual exercises where certain deprivations are assumed to have been eliminated. The final chapter summarizes the work, draws inferences and arrives at conclusions, and discusses the corresponding public policy implications.

A systematic conceptual, theoretical, and methodological introduction to multi-dimensional poverty measurement and analysis. It provides a lucid overview of the problems that a range of multidimensional techniques can address and sets out a synthetic introduction of counting and axiomatic approaches to multidimensional poverty measurement

This book puts forward an operational methodology for measuring multidimensional poverty, independent from the conceptual origin, size and qualitative as well as quantitative nature of the primary indicators used to describe the poverty of an individual, household or socio-demographic entity. It allows for the integration of the sets of techniques already available or forthcoming in the area of income poverty into the analysis of multidimensional poverty. The core of the methodology rests on a solution to the issue of aggregation across the multiple sub-dimensions of poverty. The rationale of the proposed solution is based on the exploration of the internal structure of association between these sub-dimensions of poverty. The author illustrates the conceptual debates on the dimensions of poverty and on the measurement methodologies with empirical studies showing the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches by dividing the book into two parts. The first part, which is theoretical, develops the rationale underlying the proposed methodology with numerical examples. The second part presents two case studies, one from Vietnam and the other from Senegal, using the methodology outlined in the first part. Both case studies are based on large household surveys implemented by the different national statistical offices. The unique structure of this book makes it practical for use by poverty and policy researchers, professionals in international development, and graduate students interested in poverty and inequality.

This book is written in light of the latest developments in the field of multidimensional poverty measurement. It includes clear presentations of more than a dozen different quantitative techniques and provides empirical illustrations based on data sources from developed or developing countries.