The Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) Poverty Measures: Twenty-Five Years Later

James Foster (), Joel Greer and Erik Thorbecke
Additional contact information
Joel Greer: Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

Working Papers from The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy

Abstract: Twenty-five years ago, the FGT class of decomposable poverty measures was introduced in Foster, Greer, and Thorbecke [54]. The present study provides a retrospective view of the FGT paper and the subsequent literature, as well as a brief discussion of future directions. We identify three categories of contributions: to measurement, to axiomatics, and to application. A representative subset of the literature generated by the FGT methodology is discussed and grouped according to this taxonomy. We show how the FGT paper has played a central role in several thriving literatures and has contributed to the design, implementation, and evaluation of prominent development programs: the breadth of its impact is evidenced by the many topics beyond poverty to which its methodology has been applied. We conclude with a selection of prospective research topics.

Keywords: Axioms; decomposability; FGT measures; income distribution; poverty; stochastic dominance; subgroup consistency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B21 D63 I32 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 58 pages
Date: 2010-04
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (78)

Published in Journal of Economic Inequality, Vol 8, No. 4

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.gwu.edu/~iiep/assets/docs/papers/Foster_IIEPWP2010-14.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gwi:wpaper:2010-14

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kyle Renner ().