A Multidimensional Approach: Poverty Measurement and Beyond

ALKIRE, SABINA; SANTOS, MARIA EMMA

Social Indicators Research

Springer

Lugar: Dordrecht; Año: 2013 vol. 112 p. 239 - 257

0303-8300

Poverty has probably always been understood as a multidimensional problem, yet traditionally it has been measured with one dimension: income. The assumption was that the income level could capture fairly well whether people were able to achieve certain minimum thresholds in a variety of dimensions such as nutrition, clothing and housing. In recent years there has been a growing consensus regarding the insufficiency of income poverty measures. The recognition of these limitations has led to the development of methodologies to measure poverty in a multidimensional way and to an increasing demand from governments to design official poverty measures of this kind which can complement the income poverty measures. This special issue comprises a set of nine papers that utilise the Alkire and Foster (2011) methodology. In this Introduction we set out the methodology used throughout this issue, define terms that are common across papers, and highlight the advantages and limitations of this method. We also present other multidimensional poverty measures to which the AF measures are compared in some papers, namely, the Unsatisfied Basic Needs (UBN) Index and the family of Bourguignon and Chakravarty (2003) measures. We close with a succinct overview of each paper in this issue.