What Does It Mean to Be Poor in a Rich Society? Measuring Economic Poverty

Because of such concerns, income-based poverty measures are increasingly challenged, particularly in other western industrialized countries. Critics argue for a multidimensional poverty concept. For example, people deprived of social contacts (with friends, families, and neighbors) are described as socially isolated, and hence poor in this dimension; people living in squalid housing, as “housing poor”; and people with health deficits, as “health poor.” However, those who prefer a broader approach to the measurement of poverty face a difficult task in changing the official U.S. measure. Dimensions of well-being beyond income need to be identified and agreed upon, indicators that accurately reflect these dimensions must be defined, data necessary to accurately measure them for individual living units must be collected, and the several indicators must be weighted to produce an index of the size of the poor population and its composition.