This paper joins in the debate on the size of the middle class in Latin America, providing an analysis of its structure and characteristics. Using several measurements, it finds that 40-60 percent of Latin American households are middle class, a share which has consolidated over the past decade....

Research into multidimensional poverty has gathered momentum in the last half decade, most notably in the aftermath of the global food and financial crises of 2007-2008. It has gained further momentum since the UNDP-OPHI launched the 2010 Human Development Report (HDR) and more recently as part...

The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) is not the first attempt to examine poverty along multiple definitions. Vis-a-vis the existing work and other presently available measures, this method has greater advantage in terms of international comparability and reporting. However, the methodology...

Headcount measures of poverty are by far the most common tools for evaluating poverty and gauging progress in global development goals. The headcount ratio, or the prevalence of poverty, and the headcount, or the number of the poor, both convey tangible information about poverty. But both ignore...

Understanding chronic poverty and its evolution is complex given the amount of information involved. This paper proposes a new approach to analysing the evolution of chronic poverty in a multivariate setting using a Shapley decomposition of a multidimensional chronic poverty measure proposed by...

Poverty incidence in the Philippines is rising based on the national official data released by the National Statistical Coordination Board. Poverty incidence among population rose from 24.9 percent in 2003 to 26.4 percent in 2006 and then inched up further to 26.5 percent in 2009. This is in...

Many poverty, safety net, training, and other social programs utilize multiple screening criteria to determine eligibility. We apply recent advances in multidimensional measurement analysis to develop a straightforward method for summarizing changes in groups of eligibility (screening)...

This paper presents the Colombian Multidimensional Poverty Index (CMPI), an initiative of the National Planning Department based on the methodology of Alkire and Foster (2010). The proposed index for Colombia is composed of five dimensions: education of household members; childhood and youth...

Widespread agreement that poverty is a multifaceted phenomenon, encompassing deprivations along multiple dimensions, clashes with often vociferous disagreement about how best to measure these deprivations. Drawing on the recent literature, this short note proposes three methodological...

This paper reviews developments in income and health poverty in Ireland over the 2003-2011 period using data from the Survey of Income and Living Conditions (SILC). It also examines developments in the correlation between the two. Income poverty fell up to and including 2009, after which this...