Multidimensional Poverty Measurement: Motivation, Approaches, Methodological Issues And Axiomatic Indices

SANTOS, MARIA EMMA

Quality of Human Resources : Poverty

UNESCO-EOLSS Joint Committee

Lugar: Oxford; Año: 2013;

In recent years poverty measurement is experiencing a shift from a unidimensional to a multidimensional perspective. This chapter describes the motivation for this methodological shift and the measurement approaches that have emerged as a consequence. It focuses particularly on the axiomatic approach to multidimensional measurement and details the various decisions that need to be taken when constructing a multidimensional poverty measure. The chapter describes in an intuitive way the axiomatic properties defined for multidimensional poverty measures and reviews the different proposed measures, providing a hypothetical numerical example to compare them. It also describes one international and two national applications of multidimensional indices.