This paper presents a family of multidimensional poverty indices that measure poverty as a function of the extent and the intensity of poverty. I provide a unique axiomatics from which both extent and intensity of poverty can be derived, as well as the poor be endogenously identified. This axiomatics gives rise to a family of multidimensional indices whose extremal points are the geometric mean...

How can indices of multidimensional poverty be adapted to produce measures that quantify both the joint incidence of multiple deprivations and their chronicity? This paper adopts a new approach to the measurement of chronic multidimensional poverty. It relies on the counting approach of Alkire and Foster (2011) for the measurement of multidimensional poverty in each time period and then on the ...

This essay aims at a broad, main-stream account of the literature on inequality and poverty measurement in the space of income and, additionally, deals with measures of disparity and deprivation in the more expanded domain of capabilities and functionings. In addition to an introductory and a concluding part, the paper has four sections. The first of these, on measurement of income inequality, ...

A fundamental difficulty for multidimentional poverty analysis is the identification of the poor. This paper proposes two multidimensional poverty indices: the intensive and extensive poverty, which correspond respectively to the most exclusive and inclusive definition of poverty defined according to multiple attributes. Bounds on the intensive and extensive poverty are provided. Drawing analog...

This paper develops the link between poverty and inequality by focussing on a class of poverty indices (some of them well-known) which aggregate normative concerns for absolute and relative deprivation. The indices are distinguished by a parameter that captures the ethical sensitivity of poverty measurement to “exclusion” or “relative-deprivation” aversion. We also show how the indices can be r...

We derive the asymptotic sampling distribution of various estimators frequently used to order distributions in terms of poverty, welfare and inequality. This includes estimators of most of the poverty indices currently in use, as well as estimators of the curves used to infer stochastic dominance of any order. These curves can be used to determine whether poverty, inequality or social welfare i...

Variations in aggregate poverty indices ca be due to differences in average poverty intensity, to changes in the welfare distances between those poor of initially unequal welfare status, and/or to emerging disparities in welfare among those poor of initially similar welfare status. This note uses a general cost-of-inequality approach that decomposes the total change in poverty into a sum of ind...

Current poverty measurement methodology does not allow a definitive analysis of changes in distribution, through time or between countries, which involve changes in the number or proportion of poor people. By reopening some of the discussion which has taken place around the incidence, intensity and inequality aspects of poverty, and by revisiting the continuity and transfer axioms, we show that...