Maria Emma Santos

Measuring Acute Poverty in the Developing World: Robustness and Scope of the Multidimensional Poverty Index

This paper presents the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), a measure of acute poverty, understood as a person’s inability to meet simultaneously minimum international standards in indicators related to the Millennium Development Goals and to core functionings. It constitutes the first implementation of the direct method to measure poverty for over 100 developing countries. After presenting the MPI, we analyse its scope and robustness, with a focus on the data challenges and methodological issues involved in constructing and estimating it. A range of robustness tests indicate that the MPI offers a reliable framework that can complement global income poverty estimates.

Human Capital and the Quality of Education in a Poverty Trap Model

This paper presents a model of a poverty trap that is caused by an unequal initial income and human capital distribution, and differences in the quality of education between children from the more and less advantaged social sectors. Under certain conditions, the economy converges to a situation with three stable and simultaneous equilibria, two of which constitute poverty traps, lowering the economy’s current and steady-state aggregate output level as well as its growth rate. The model suggests that a policy oriented to equalizing the quality of education would, in the long run, have potential in reducing initial inequalities.

Poor and Dissatisfied? Income poverty, Poverty Transitions and Life Satisfaction in Chile.

Chile is an interesting country in which to study the relationship between poverty and subjective wellbeing, having experienced a remarkable fall in poverty over the past two decades. This paper explores how poverty status and transitions in and out of poverty contributed to life satisfaction in the late 2000s. Using new data for 2006 and 2009, we find that poor people were more dissatisfied with life than the non-poor and that income gains did not appreciably affect the satisfaction of the poor while they remained below the poverty line. People who were not poor in either period exhibited higher satisfaction than those who were poor in both periods, while those who escaped poverty between 2006 and 2009 exhibited higher satisfaction than those who remained poor. In addition, people who fell into poverty in 2009 were no more or no less satisfied with their lives than those who were poor in both periods. The evidence suggests poor people may not have adapted to their circumstances, in contrast to much literature exploring income dynamics and life satisfaction, and also that people’s recent experiences appear to affect their perceptions more than more distant ones.

Multidimensional Poverty Measurement and Analysis: Chapter 1 - Introduction

This working paper presents the normative, empirical, and policy motivations for focusing on multidimensional poverty measurement and analysis in general, and one measurement approach in particular. The fundamental normative motivation is to create effective measures that better reflect poor people’s experience, so that policies using such measures reduce poverty. Such measures are needed because, empirically, income-poor households are (surprisingly) not well-matched to households carrying other basic deprivations like malnutrition; also the trends of income and non-income deprivations are not matched, and nor does growth ensure the reduction of social deprivations. And, a dashboard overlooks the interconnection between deprivations, which people experience and policies seek to address. Turning to policy, we close by discussing how the Alkire-Foster methodology we present in Working Paper 86 (“Multidimensional Poverty Measurement and Analysis: Chapter 5 – The Alkire-Foster Counting Methology”) may be used.

Chapter 1 Refining the basic needs approach: A multidimensional analysis of poverty in Latin America

Latin America has a longstanding tradition in multidimensional poverty measurement through the unsatisfied basic needs (UBN) approach. However, the method has been criticized on several grounds, including the selection of indicators, the implicit weighting scheme and the aggregation methodology, among others. The estimates by the UBN approach have traditionally been complemented (or replaced) with income poverty estimates. Under the premise that poverty is inherently multidimensional, in this chapter we propose three methodological refinements to the UBN approach. Using the proposed methodology we provide a set of comparable poverty estimates for six Latin American countries between 1992 and 2006.

Growth and Poverty Revisited from a Multidimensional Perspective

Abstract The actual impact of economic growth on poverty reduction is of fundamental importance to the development agenda. This paper offers new empirical evidence on growth and poverty measured from a multidimensional perspective using the global Multidimensional Poverty Index. Results from a First Difference Estimator Model suggest that while economic growth reduces multidimensional poverty, this impact is well below a one-to-one relationship and lower than the impact of growth on income poverty. Results from a cross-section model additionally suggest that countries with higher levels of exports, higher share of industry and services and higher control of corruption have lower multidimensional poverty.

Data and Analysis

• The team collected the amount of dust produced in one basement while a train was being loaded out. • The floors were swept in approximately one hour intervals. • The rate of dust produced came to be 62.8 lbs. per hour within the basement that measured 9015 square foot.

El índice multidimensional y trampas de pobreza en el Cono Sur

En este trabajo se propone que el indice de pobreza multidimensional (IPM) sea un indicador que sirva para cuantificar situaciones de tramas de pobreza en los paises, en tanto permite medir la incidencia e intensidad de la pobreza de personas que experimentan privaciones simultaneas basicas. El IPM resulta de interes para tal fin, tanto porque puede servir de complemento a las medidas de pobreza por ingreso en el tiempo, como porque puede resultar una alternativa mas viable de instrumentar en forma periodica en ausencia de datos de panel. Se explora el IPM en el caso de cinco paises del Cono Sur.