When evaluating poverty, the relative poverty line may be considered as a percentage of the median income or it may be a percentage of the average income. It is proved that, with a poverty line relative to the median income, reducing poverty may become less costly in proportion to the total...

We examine three families of one-parameter functional forms for estimating Lorenz curves: power (elementary and Pareto), exponential (elementary and Gupta) and fractional (Rohde). The computing difficulties to determine the headcount ratio (i.e., the percentage of poor) have been underestimated....