Poverty Measurement in Economics (In French)

This paper gives an overview of the way the issue of poverty measurement is typically addressed in economics. After having briefly defined what is meant by poverty in economics, I examine successively the unidimensional approach to poverty based on the income or expenses, and the multidimensional approach, which introduces non-monetary attributes in addition to income. Particular emphasis is placed on those properties of the poverty measures, that are deemed reasonable, and on their implications for the structure of the corresponding indices. I also insist on the dominance approach, which allows one to take into account a large range of points of views concerning the way poverty should be assessed.