The view of poverty as a multidimensional phenomenon has swiftly become mainstream. However, the debate remains open as to how such ‘multidimensional poverty' should be assessed in practical settings, particularly when identifying the beneficiaries of poverty alleviation programmes. This paper...

We explore how to measure poverty over time, by focusing on trajectories of poverty rather than poverty at a particular point in time. We consider welfare outcomes over a period in time, consisting of a number of spells. We offer a characterization of desirable properties for measuring poverty...

Under quite likely conditions, data measurement errors can cause an (upward) bias in unidimensional poverty estimates and thus mislead both conceptual analyses and policy implications. In the case of multidimensional poverty, we find that by proposing a dual cut-off strategy, the Alkire-Foster...

An old intuition suggests that poverty may perpetuate itself due to mild risk taking.  Risk-averse individuals remain in poverty while their more daring peers escape by means of high-return, high-risk activities.  As a growing literature increasingly highlights the role of insurance as a...