We investigate how to make poverty comparisons using multidimensional indicators of well-being, showing in particular how to check whether the comparisons are robust to aggregation procedures and to the choice of multidimensional poverty lines. In contrast to earlier work, our methodology...

We assess whether global social welfare has improved in the last decades despite (or because of) the substantial increase in global population. We use for this purpose a relatively unknown but simple and attractive social evaluation approach called critical-level generalized utilitarianism...

The evaluation of development processes and of public policies often involves comparisons of social states that differ in income distributions, population sizes and life longevity. This may require social evaluation principles to be sensitive to the quality, the quantity and the duration of...

We propose simple graphical methods to identify poverty-reducing marginal reforms of transfer programs. The methods are based on Program Dominance curves that display cumulative program benefits weighted by powers of poverty gaps. These curves can be decomposed simply as sums of targeting...

In 1990, Cerioli and Zani introduced an operational multivariate method to analyse and measure poverty, aiming at incorporating several dimensions of poverty. As Dagum and Costa [2004] showed, this study applies the fuzzy set theoretic approach and thus making quantitatively operational the...

Given the multiplicative decomposition of the Sen index into three commonly used poverty statistics – the poverty rate (poverty incidence), poverty gap ratio (poverty depth) and 1 plus the Gini index of poverty gap ratios of the poor (inequality of poverty) – the index becomes much easier to...

This article extends the paper of Dagum C. and Costa M. (“Analysis and Measurement of Poverty. Univariate and Multivariate Approaches and their Policy Implications. A case of Study: Italy”, In Dagum C. and Ferrari G. (eds.), Household Behaviour, Equivalence Scales, Welfare and Poverty,...

Cette recherche étend l’approche de Dagum C. et Costa M. [“Analysis and Measurement of Poverty. Univariate and Multivariate Approaches and their Policy Implications. A case of Study: Italy”, dans Dagum C. et Ferrari G. (ed.), Household Behaviour, Equivalence Scales, Welfare and Poverty,...

It is common to argue that poverty is a multidimensional issue. Yet few studies have included the various dimensions of deprivation to yield a broader and fuller picture of poverty. The present paper considers the multidimensional aspects of deprivation by specifying a poverty line for each...

The paper contributes to the measurement of poverty and vulnerability in three ways. First, we propose a new approach to separating poverty into chronic and transient components. Second, we provide corrections for the statistical biases introduced when using a small number of periods to estimate...