This paper demonstrates that the property of 'replication invariance', generally considered to be an innocuous requirement for the extension of fixed-population poverty comparisons to variable-population contexts, is incompatible with other plausible variable- and fixed-population axioms. --...

Debates about poverty relief and foreign aid often hinge on claims about how many poor people there are in the world and what constitutes poverty. Good measures of poverty are essential for addressing the world poverty problem. Measures of poverty require a basis for determining who is poor and...