Little is known about the effectiveness of means-tested benefits in Bulgaria. Using individual and household level data, I analyse the performance of two social assistance and two means- tested child benefits. I find that the programmes reach a very small proportion of the households with...

Little is known about the effectiveness of means-tested benefits in Bulgaria. Using individual and household level data, I analyse the performance of two social assistance and two means-tested child benefits. I find that the programmes reach a very small proportion of the households with incomes...

The increasing interest in multidimensional poverty and well-being analysis has added complexity to the way these phenomena are conceptualized and measured. When multiple attributes are considered, a criterion determining the relative importance attached to the different dimensions has to be...

Poverty measures that are widely used generate inconsistency and incoherence because of their failure to be adequately grounded in a conception of what ultimately matters and why. Obscurantism in relation to underlying values is the ultimate source of the observed difficulties. Only poverty...

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...

The paper discusses the main issues related to negative and zero incomes that are relevant for the measurement of poverty. It shows the prevalence of non-positive incomes in high- and middle-income countries, provides an analysis of the sources and structure of these incomes, outlines the...

The study investigates whether economic growth in the Balkan countries was pro-poor in the most recent period. We also try to establish to what extent various measures of pro-poorness of economic growth produce consistent and comparable results. Firstly, concepts of pro-poor growth are defined...

A new class of chronic poverty measures is constructed that builds upon Jalan and Ravallion (1998) but does not require resources in different periods to be perfect substitutes when identifying the chronically poor. We use a general mean to combine the resources of a person into a permanent...

The "Minimum Vital Income" (IMV) constitutes a novelty in the panorama for fighting poverty by guaranteeing minimum incomes after the COVID-19 crisis. This work simulates the distributional and poverty effects of the IMV introduction across Spanish regions using EUROMOD. Our results show that...

Growth that reduces poverty is often considered pro-poor regardless of whether the poor benefit from it more than the non-poor. Such growth could simply be termed poverty-reducing growth. This paper argues that for growth to be pro-poor it should disproportionally benefit the poor. The paper...