Counting and multidimensional poverty measurement

Sabina Alkire and James Foster ()

Journal of Public Economics, 2011, vol. 95, issue 7, 476-487

Abstract: This paper proposes a new methodology for multidimensional poverty measurement consisting of an identification method ρk that extends the traditional intersection and union approaches, and a class of poverty measures Mα. Our identification step employs two forms of cutoff: one within each dimension to determine whether a person is deprived in that dimension, and a second across dimensions that identifies the poor by ‘counting’ the dimensions in which a person is deprived. The aggregation step employs the FGT measures, appropriately adjusted to account for multidimensionality. The axioms are presented as joint restrictions on identification and the measures, and the methodology satisfies a range of desirable properties including decomposability. The identification method is particularly well suited for use with ordinal data, as is the first of our measures, the adjusted headcount ratio M0. We present some dominance results and an interpretation of the adjusted headcount ratio as a measure of unfreedom. Examples from the US and Indonesia illustrate our methodology.

Keywords: Multidimensional poverty measurement; Capability approach; Identification; FGT measures; Decomposability; Ordinal variables (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 H1 I3 I32 O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1105)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Counting and multidimensional poverty measurement (2011)
Working Paper: Counting and Multidimensional Poverty Measurement (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:95:y:2011:i:7:p:476-487

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2010.11.006

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