Measuring poverty

The most commonly used measure is the ‘headcount’ ratio - simply the total number of poor households or individuals expressed as a ratio of the number of all households or individuals. This measures the incidence of poverty. But in the quarter of a century after Sen’s (1976) groundbreaking work on p...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: David, Demery
Format: Conference or Workshop Item
Language:English
Published: 2005
Subjects:
Online Access:http://repo.uum.edu.my/237/1/MEASURING_POVERTY.pdf
http://repo.uum.edu.my/237/
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Summary:The most commonly used measure is the ‘headcount’ ratio - simply the total number of poor households or individuals expressed as a ratio of the number of all households or individuals. This measures the incidence of poverty. But in the quarter of a century after Sen’s (1976) groundbreaking work on poverty measurement, more than a dozen new poverty measures have been proposed. These measures have their strengths and weaknesses and it is now generally accepted that a complete picture of poverty requires consideration of more than one single measure. We shall assess a number of key indices of poverty and conclude by outlining some useful graphical methods of presenting the various dimensions of poverty.