Person Equivalent Headcount Measures of Poverty

Tony Castleman, James E. Foster and Stephen Smith
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Tony Castleman: George Washington University
James E. Foster: George Washington University

Chapter 3 in Inequality and Growth: Patterns and Policy, 2016, pp 101-130 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The most common tools for monitoring poverty are headcount measures, which evaluate a country’s poverty level using the number or prevalence of poor persons in the country. Yet as emphasized by Sen (1976), headcount measures have serious limitations stemming from their inability to differentiate among the poor.1 Large changes in incomes of the poor are ignored when the incomes stay below the poverty line, while small changes near the line can disproportionately affect measured poverty. Alternative poverty measures have been developed that address this problem by accounting for the intensity of poverty; but these measures are typically absent from policy discussions as they can be viewed as challenging for policymakers to explain intuitively, or for the public to understand.

Keywords: Poverty Line; Poverty Measure; Multidimensional Poverty; South Asia; Multidimensional Poverty Index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Working Paper: Person Equivalent Headcount Measures of Poverty (2015)
Working Paper: Person Equivalent Headcount Measures of Poverty (2015)
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DOI: 10.1057/9781137554543_3

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