Fuzzy poverty measurement : multidimensional and unidimensional indicators

This paper proposes a comparison between multidimensional and unidimensional poverty indicators. Sets of poor units identified by traditional head count ratio, fuzzy unidimensional and fuzzy multidimensional indices are compared by means of a rank correlation analysis. The robustness of the comparison is ensured by a simulation study, which allows to address several issues related not only to fuzzy sets based methods, such as the subjective choice of membership to the poor set, but also to the multidimensional measurement, such as the effect of the weighting system. Our results stress that the unidimensional indicators provide partial information on poverty condition.