The Measurement of Multidimensional Poverty

Many authors have insisted on the necessity of defining poverty as a multi-dimensional concept rather than relying on income or consumption expenditures per capita. Yet, not much has actually been done to include the various dimensions of deprivation into the practical definition and measurement of poverty. Existing attempts along that direction consist of aggregagting various attributes into a single index through some arbitrary function and defining a poverty line and associated poverty measures on the basis of that index.