A fuzzy logic approach to poverty analysis based on the Gini and Bonferroni inequality indices

Abstract: In the poverty analysis framework, a great deal of attention has been paid to the poverty measurement in terms of monetary variables, such as income or consumption. In this context, a relevant open problem is connected with the distinction between poor and nonpoor. In fact, the concept of poverty is rather vague and cannot be defined in a clear way. In this respect, following a fuzzy logic approach, some new poverty measures are proposed. In particular, the fuzzy extension of two existing poverty measures based on the Gini and Bonferroni inequality indices is provided. Some synthetic and real applications are given in order to show how the proposed poverty measures work.