Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Multidimensional poverty measurement'

Multidimensional deprivation and persistent poverty are important research areas within the poverty measurement literature. Still, both encompass measurement issues for which methodological solutions are yet to be analysed. The thesis that I present here analyses three specific measurement issues, identified as relevant within these research areas, and proposes methodological approaches to tackle each of them. First, it evaluates the effect of different demographic population structures on societal multidimensional deprivation incidence comparisons. The results of this evaluation demonstrate that societal multidimensional comparisons reflect not only differences in relative deprivation but also differences in the demographic composition of the societies to be compared. These differences in the demographic structure of the population, thus, confound societal multidimensional deprivation comparisons. To tackle this comparability problem, the application of direct and indirect standardisation methods is proposed and analysed in this context. Second, it studies the effect of differences in need, exhibited across individuals from different demographic population subgroups or households of different sizes and compositions, on multidimensional deprivation incidence profiles. To address differences in needs and enhance individual or household comparability, I propose a family of multidimensional deprivation indices that describes how much deprivation two demographically heterogeneous units with different needs must exhibit to be catalogued as equivalently deprived. The obtained empirical results demonstrate that neglecting differences in needs yields biased multidimensional deprivation incidence profiles. The results also shed light on the ability of my proposed family of measures to capture these differences in need effectively. Third, this thesis analyses the reliability of persistent poverty measures in the presence of survey non-response. The obtained empirical results indicate that persistent poverty measures based on balanced panel estimates that do not account for the relationship between survey non-response and the socioeconomic status of the household provide a significantly biased picture of the intertemporal phenomenon. The methodologies that I present in this thesis are meant foremost to be easy to implement and understand by policymakers. As such, they are proposed as methodological tools to improve the measurement and analysis of poverty in the policy context.

Seminario para optar al título de Ingeniero Comercial, Mención Economía
This seminar addresses child poverty in Chile from the new poverty measurement methodology (released in January 2015 by the Ministry of Social Development), both from an income and a multidimensional approach. The objective is to emphasize the importance of developing appropriate tools to measure and characterize child poverty, given its overrepresentation on poverty measures in the country and the gravity of the negative consequences poverty has over a child’s future development. This work analyzes the evolution of child poverty patterns in time, measured with data from the CASEN Household Survey, from 1990 to 2013 for the traditional methodology, and from 2006 to 2013 for the new methodology. The overrepresentation of children in poverty measures is shown using a monetary approach. Then this work analyzes the dynamics of income and multidimensional poverty, to finish with a deeper study of the specific deprivations children experience at a household level and a description of aggregated multidimensional poverty measures. The Alkire & Foster (2007) methodology is used to measure aggregated multidimensional indicators, which allows to analyze certain sub groups of the population. Results show that although indicators for the multidimensional measure are not child-specific, the aggregated indicators show a higher poverty rate for children than for adults, which is also the case using a monetary approach. In addition, its shown that using a multidimensional measure does add value, since both methodologies identify different segments of the population, having an overlap of less than 40% of the income poor.
El presente seminario aborda la pobreza infantil en Chile desde la nueva metodología de medición de pobreza (publicada en Enero de 2015 por el Ministerio de Desarrollo Social), tanto con un enfoque por ingresos como con un enfoque multidimensional. El objetivo es enfatizar la importancia de desarrollar herramientas para medir y caracterizar adecuadamente la pobreza en la niñez, dada su sobrerrepresentación en las medidas de pobreza en el país, y dada la gravedad de las consecuencias negativas que esta puede generar en el desarrollo futuro de un niño o adolescente. Este trabajo analiza cómo se comportan los patrones de pobreza infantil en el tiempo, medido a partir de los datos de la Encuesta de Caracterización Socioeconómica, desde 1990 hasta 2013 para la metodología tradicional, y desde 2006 hasta 2013 para la nueva metodología. Primero se utiliza el enfoque monetario para mostrar la sobrerrepresentación de la población infantil en la población pobre del país, luego se analiza la dinámica entre la pobreza por ingresos y la multidimensional, y para concluir se ahonda en las privaciones que vive la población infantil desde un enfoque multidimensional. Se utiliza la metodología de agregación de Alkire y Foster (2007) para calcular los indicadores de pobreza multidimensional, lo que permite analizar ciertos subgrupos de la población. Los resultados muestran que a pesar de los indicadores no ser específicos para niños, todas las medidas agregadas de pobreza multidimensional son mayores para la población infantil que para la población adulta, al igual que con el enfoque monetario. Además se muestra que sí existe un valor al medir la pobreza desde una perspectiva multidimensional, ya que ambos enfoques identifican a segmentos diferentes de la población, existiendo un overlap de menos del 40% de los pobres por ingresos.

Magister Commercii - MCom
With the transition to a democratic society, one of the challenges to emerge was to provide economic freedoms for all – that is, freedom from isolation, freedom from powerlessness, freedom from hunger, and freedom from poverty. Fighting poverty has always been high on the agenda of the democratic government since the transition. Numerous measures and policies were instituted aimed at reducing poverty. Researchers initiated serious efforts to try and understand the nature and extent of poverty, through various studies being conducted. Many of these studies focused only on money-metric measures, despite the fact that poverty is a multidimensional concept. What has resulted are various poverty-measurement methods producing different results on the extent of poverty. In addition, certain aspects of these money-metric approaches have serious shortcomings. The fuzzy sets approach addresses many of these shortcomings, as it is a multidimensional approach. Few studies have used this approach to measure poverty in South Africa. This thesis plans to use this method to analyse poverty levels and trends in South Africa, focusing on multidimensional, non-money-metric poverty. Data from Census 1996, Census 2001 and Community Survey 2007 will be used for the study. From the results of the analysis it was established that there is some divergence in the findings of money-metric approaches and those of fuzzy sets. A key result to emerge is the difference in poverty trends over the period 1996 – 2007. Most studies reviewed in Chapter Three that used the money-metric approach showed that poverty trends were upward in the 1990s, before a downward trend took place in the 2000s. This took place irrespective of the survey data used. The non-money-metric poverty trends derived in this chapter, however, show a continuous downward trend over the period. The overall mean deprivation in South Africa has declined since 1996. For people residing in provinces such as Limpopo, the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, they are more likely to be poor under the fuzzy sets approach. This may be an indication of inadequate service delivery and the extent to which recent government measures to address poverty have been successful or not. In terms of race, blacks still have the highest mean deprivation, but enjoyed the biggest decline of mean deprivation between 1996 and 2007. Finally, mean deprivation for female-headed households in South Africa was also higher than for male-headed households over the period.

Evaluating the welfare of nations is high on the research agenda of the economists, practitioners and policy-makers. The literature contributions of the last decades triggered a multivariate perception of the well-being, which is suggested to go beyond the GDP, and created a need for more complex approaches to evaluate the welfare as well as poverty. The first essay investigates the approaches to multivariate poverty measurement and focuses on the composite index approach and the steps involved in it. An important aspect of the multivariate perspective in well-being is the dependence among the underlying indicators. There is growing evidence in the literature that well-being dimensions are interrelated. This dependence among attributes matters for multidimensional poverty measurement, since income is no longer the only indicator to be considered. However, the reviewed approaches to multivariate poverty measurement do not commonly capture this interdependence. The second essay suggests a copula function as a flexible tool to estimate the dependence among welfare variables. Moreover, it proposes to incorporate the evaluated dependence in the composite indicator. The trade-off among attributes, which is established via the weighting of dimensions, is identified as a possible channel to include the interdependence in the composite indicator. The third essay of this dissertation defines bivariate and multivariate copula-based measures of dependence and applies them using the recent data from the EU-SILC. The results suggest that key dimensions of well-being, i.e. income, education and health, are positively interdependent. In addition, the strength of pairwise and multivariate dependence reinforced in the post-crisis period in some European countries. Finally, the last essay proposes a new class of the copula-based multidimensional poverty indices by innovating over the weighting approach. The weighting scheme proposed in this dissertation incorporates the estimated copula-based dependence and contains necessary normative controls to be chosen by the practitioner. The findings of the last essay suggest that the overall poverty is driven not only by the individual shortfalls, but also by the degree of interdependence among well-being indicators. Considering the proposed copula-based weighting scheme and the proposal of the new class of copula-based poverty indices, this dissertation contributes to the multivariate poverty measurement by suggesting the channel to enclose the dependence structure in the composite indicators. The proposed copula-based methodology will advance the multidimensional poverty analysis and the poverty-reducing policy, which can be designed to address the problem of interdependence of individual achievements.

Doutoramento em Economia.
Neste trabalho apresenta-se uma história do pensamento económico na medição de pobreza - desde o que pode ser considerado o inicio da economia da pobreza ate a era de redescoberta da pobreza durante a década de 1960 - bern como uma revisão da literatura sobre as principais ferramentas de medição da pobreza apresentadas pela Ciência Económica. E ainda apresentado, no âmbito da abordagem multidimensional, uma proposta de um índice de medição de pobreza, inovadora quanto a ponderação dos diferentes atributos considerados como elementos de privação. 0 propósito do indice proposto e o de medir a pobreza na sua multidimensionalidade, sendo que cada dimensão de privação e ponderada no indice de acordo com a Hierarquia de Necessidades de Maslow. Esta forma de ponderação faz com que o indice proposto seja diferente dos ja existentes pelo facto de se incorporarem elementos de uma teoria psicológica consolidada na sua estrutura. Por fim, o indice apresentado e aplicado atraves de dados do European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) para Portugal em 2007 e comparado com dois outros metodos multidimensionais de medi9ao da pobreza.
This work presents a history of the economic thought on poverty measurement - from what can be considered the beginning of the Poverty Economics until the "Rediscovering Poverty" era during the 1960s - as well as a review of the literature on the main poverty measurement tools presented by the Economic Science. We also present, having the multidimensional approach as background, a proposal for a poverty measurement index, somehow innovative regarding the weighting of different attributes considered as elements of deprivation. The aim of the proposed index is to measure poverty as a multidimensional phenomenon, where each dimension of deprivation is weighted in the index according to the Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. This way of weighting makes the proposed index different from the existing indices given that it incorporates elements of a consolidated psychological theory in its structure. Finally, the index is applied using the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) microdata for Portugal in 2007, and compared with two other methods of measuring multidimensional poverty.

This project deploys a modified Water Poverty Index (WPI) in villages reconstructed after the 2004 tsunami in southeastern India. While previous measurements of access to water have advanced understandings of waterscape complexities, this modified WPI improves past efforts and deconstructs some of the previous misunderstandings and notions regarding access to water. The traditional WPI is multidimensional and seeks to measure water access in a holistic fashion; the WPI presented here employs this approach, but is adapted to include new place-based indicators (e.g., Secondary Sources). Furthermore, unlike previous iterations of the WPI, our modified index incorporates water quality testing, three weight schemes, and operates at several scales. Ultimately, the construction and arrangement of our modified WPI enables statistical analyses, geospatial analyses, and water poverty mapping -- which are absent in most prior studies-- while still remaining easy to populate and descriptively analyze among non-academicians. Statistical tests of original household level data from a total of 24 villages in Nagapattinam District, Tamil Nadu, and Karaikal District, Puducherry, indicate significant differences between the two districts in indicator scores as well as total WPI score. Additionally, the urban and rural areas within each district were found to be significantly different in level of water poverty, and trends were similar across the three weight schemes. Multiple linear regressions show correlation of independent socioeconomic variables (i.e., Income, Education, and Assets-Networks) with the dependent indicator of Capacity, but not with the other indicators or total WPI score. Global Moran's I tests indicate positive spatial autocorrelation, demonstrating that indicator and WPI scores tend to cluster in space. Overall, the results match what was anticipated, yet serve to challenge commonly held assumptions on urban-rural hierarchies and the role of socioeconomic variables in determining water poverty. The construction, deployment, and analytical potential of this modified WPI can be used by scholars to improve existing conceptualizations and measurements of access to water, while the results can be used by local governments and nonprofits to improve resource allocation and inform spatially-targeted interventions.
Master of Science

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Apesar do crescente aumento do estoque de riqueza material no mundo, a pobreza continua a ser um problema de grande extensão e gravidade devido, especialmente, às desigualdades sociais. Existe uma dificuldade inicial na formulação e acompanhamento das políticas de combate a pobreza que é a indefinição ou limitação das concepções de pobreza adotadas. Este trabalho considera as inúmeras críticas quanto ao caráter limitado da renda, a proxy mais utilizada para a descrição da pobreza, adotando uma abordagem multidimensional como a mais adequada para a análise. Concluiuse, entretanto que a abordagem da renda pode ser utilizada para a mensuração da pobreza como proxy de uma conceituação multifacetada deste fenômeno, desde que completada com indicadores sociais, mas é insuficiente para a análise das suas causas. Utilizouse a Bahia como estudo de caso para a discussão da adequação da renda como forma de medir a pobreza. Diferentes estudos apontavam resultados distintos desde o início da década de 90; um dos motivos seria a concepção de pobreza utilizada. O problema de pesquisa deste trabalho então foi o seguinte: a dinâmica da pobreza na Bahia demonstrada através de linhas de pobreza baseadas na renda é consistente com uma abordagem multidimensional? A hipótese inicial de que as análises da dinâmica da pobreza eram inconsistentes com uma abordagem multidimensional não foi comprovada, ou seja, a evolução da pobreza entre 1991 e 2000 descritas através da renda mostrouse semelhante à observada por meio das necessidades básicas ou das capacidades, mensuradas por meio de um sistema de indicadores sociais e do IDH, respectivamente. A distinção de resultados ocorreu na análise baseada nos indicadores de desigualdades, que buscavam refletir a abordagem de exclusão social. A observação das diversas dimensões da pobreza e seus comportamentos no período e a análise dos resultados foi objetivo específico deste trabalho. A pesquisa foi feita através de uma metodologia quantitativa com dados secundários a partir de quatro perspectivas em relação à pobreza (renda, necessidades básicas, capacidades e exclusão social). Concluíse assim que para se ter um quadro mais próximo da realidade, há uma necessidade de se analisar a pobreza utilizando abordagens distintas, mas complementares.
Salvador

Non-monetary deprivation indicators are now widely used for studying and measuring poverty in Europe. However, despite their prevalence, the empirical performance of existing deprivation scales has rarely been examined. This thesis i) identifies possible conceptual problems of existing deprivation scales such as indexing, missing dimensions and threshold; ii) empirically assesses the extent of possible error in measurement related to these conceptual problems; and iii) offer an alternative way for constructing deprivation measures to mitigate the identified conceptual problems. The thesis consists of four stand-alone papers, accompanied by an overarching introduction and conclusion. The first three papers provide empirical evidence on the empirical consequences of the missing dimensions and threshold problems for the measurement and analysis of poverty, while the fourth paper exemplifies a concept-led multidimensional design that can reduce the error introduced by these conceptual problems. The analysis is generally held for 25 EU countries using European Survey of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC); only in the second paper, the analysis is done for the UK using British Household Panel Survey (BHPS).

Cette thèse explore deux questions autour de la précarité énergétique en France. Quel(s) indicateur(s) adopter pour quantifier la précarité énergétique et capturer ses multiples dimensions? Dans quelle mesure la fiscalité écologique pourrait-elle amplifier le phénomène ou, au contraire, constituer une opportunité de le combattre?Un premier chapitre introduit les enjeux sociaux et économiques de la précarité énergétique en France, ainsi que les défis que ce phénomène soulève pour les acteurs publics dans le cadre de la transition écologique (chapitre 1). Puis la thèse s'organise en deux grandes parties. La première partie concerne la quantification de la précarité énergétique. Je commence par rappeler les débats actuels autour de la mesure de la précarité énergétique et par souligner les limites des approches existantes (chapitre 2). Puis, j’explore la dimension transport du phénomène et propose un indice composite qui cible les différents facteurs qui contraignent la mobilité des ménages et leurs possibilités d’adaptation. Cet indice identifie trois niveaux d’exposition à une hausse des prix des carburants : précarité, vulnérabilité et dépendance (chapitre 3). Je poursuis ensuite la réflexion sur la construction d’un indice multidimensionnel de précarité énergétique et je cherche à mettre à jour ses implications politiques. Deux indices sont élaborés : un pour le logement et un pour le transport. Je montre comment ces nouveaux indices, parce qu’ils s’intéressent au cumul des facteurs qui désavantagent les ménages en matière d’énergie, permettent de limiter les erreurs d’inclusion et d’exclusion reprochées aux approches classiques. Une application dans le contexte français apporte de nouvelles perspectives sur le ciblage des réponses politiques et souligne la nécessité de remédier aux dimensions non monétaires de la précarité énergétique (chapitre 4).La seconde partie concerne les impacts distributifs de la fiscalité carbone. A partir d'une revue de la littérature, je précise les enjeux méthodologiques et les choix de modélisation pour rendre compte de manière satisfaisante de la distribution des impacts (chapitre 5). Je développe ensuite un modèle de microsimulation spécialement conçu pour évaluer l’impact sur les ménages de la taxe carbone française. Ce modèle simule, pour un échantillon représentatif de la population française, les taxes prélevées sur leur consommation d’énergie dans le logement et le transport. Je l’utilise pour quantifier l’impact de la taxe carbone sur les inégalités et la précarité énergétique. Enfin, j’explore ensuite différents scénarios de redistribution aux ménages avec pour objectif de corriger les iniquités engendrées - en particulier compenser la régressivité de la taxe carbone et combattre la précarité énergétique. J’évalue le coût de ces mesures au regard des recettes de la taxe carbone (chapitre 6)
This thesis explores two questions about fuel poverty in France: What indicator(s) should be adopted to quantify fuel poverty and capture its multiple dimensions? To what extent does ecological taxation amplify the phenomenon or, on the contrary, provides an opportunity to fight it?A first chapter introduces the social and economic issues of fuel poverty in France, as well as the challenges this phenomenon raises for public actors in the context of an ecological transition (chapter 1). Then the thesis is divided into two main parts.The first part deals with the measurement of fuel poverty. I start by highlighting the current debates on the measurement of fuel poverty and the limitations of existing approaches (chapter 2). Next, I explore the transport dimension of fuel poverty and I propose a composite index of the various factors that constrain household mobility and their possibilities to adapt to higher fuel prices. This index identifies three levels of exposure to rising fuel prices: precariousness, vulnerability and dependence (chapter 3). I then continue studying the design of a multidimensional index of energy poverty and I seek to uncover its political implications. Two indices are developed: one for housing and one for transport. I show how these new indices, through addressing the cumulative factors that disadvantage households in terms of energy, can help limit the inclusion and exclusion errorsfrom which conventional approaches suffer. Quantification in the French context brings new insights on the targeting of policy responses and emphasizes the need to address the non-monetary dimensions of fuel poverty (chapter 4). The second part studies the distributive impacts of carbon taxation. Based on a review of literature, I discuss the methodological issues and the modelling choices to represent the distribution of impacts (chapter 5). I then develop a microsimulation model to assess the impact of the French carbon tax on households. This model simulates, for a representative sample of the French population, the taxes levied on their energy consumption in housing and transport. I use this model to quantify the impact of the carbon tax on inequality and fuel poverty. Finally, I explore different scenarios of redistribution of carbon tax revenues to households, with the objective to correct the found inequities - in particular, to compensate for the regressivity of the carbon tax and to reduce fuel poverty. I evaluate the cost of these measures in respect to the amount of carbon tax revenues (chapter 6)

博士
國立中正大學
社會福利研究所
104
Poverty cannot be measured using a single indicator because of its multidimensional nature. In recent years there has been considerable research on multidimensional poverty measurement internationally. However, most research on poverty in Taiwan has focused primarily on unidimensional poverty measurement related to economic indicators. Therefore, this paper explored the multidimensional poverty in Taiwan by applying the Alkire-Foster Counting Methodology. The multidimensional poverty index (MPI), a composite measure of education, medical resources, environment, health, and standard of living, was calculated. We found that the MPI was not overestimated while taking into account of the incidence and intensity of multidimensional poverty. The MPI substantially varied across different cities and counties and was much higher in South-Central Taiwan. In terms of decomposition, the contributions of deprivation in each dimension to overall poverty varied by regions. The subgroup decompositions allowed us to identify the subgroup’s multidimensional poverty and computed the contribution of each subgroup to overall poverty.

Ab den 1980er Jahren entwickelte Amartya Sen eine neue Wohlfahrtstheorie: den Capability Approach (Sen, 1979; 1985; 1992; 1999; 2009). Dabei ersetzen Capabilities und Functionings, d.h. das, was Personen tatsächlich in der Lage sind zu tun und zu sein, den traditionellen Einkommensansatz. Armut ist im Capability Approach das Unvermögen, ein bestimmtes Minimum an zentralen Capabilities zu erreichen, die benötigt werden, um das Leben nach den eigenen Vorstellungen zu gestalten. Der Capability Approach hat so viele interessante Eigenschaften, besonders in Bezug auf die Armutsmessung, dass er zunehmend Einfluss in der Wohlfahrtsökonomie gewinnt. Diese Entwicklung wird durch empirische Untersuchungen gefördert, die zeigen, dass dieser multidimensionale Ansatz zur Armutsmessung deutlich andere Ergebnisse generiert als der traditionelle Einkommensansatz (vgl. Klasen, 2000, Alkire und Santos, 2010, Figari, 2012). Der derzeitige multidimensionale Ansatz hat jedoch eine methodische Schwäche: Ungleichheit zwischen Armutsdimensionen wird entweder als Korrelationssensitivität definiert – womit Effizienz aber nicht Verteilungsgerechtigkeit berücksichtigt wird – oder als die Verteilung multipler Mangelerscheinungen in einer Gesellschaft – womit Verteilungsgerechtigkeit aber nicht Effizienz berücksichtigt wird. Die ersten beiden Kapitel dieser Dissertation widmen sich der Behebung dieser methodischen Schwäche. Dazu wird Ungleichheit zwischen Dimensionen zunächst als „korrelationssensitive Verteilung multipler Mangelerscheinungen in einer Gesellschaft“ definiert. Die ersten beiden Kapitel operationalisieren diese erweiterte Definition für den Fall ordinaler und kardinaler Armutsindices. Im Einzelnen wird ein neues Axiom für den ordinalen sowie den kardinalen Fall eingeführt, das das Ausmaß, mit dem ein Ungleichheitsfördernder Tausch Armut sinken (oder steigen) lässt, von der Beziehung zwischen den Armutsdimensionen abhängig macht. Diese Neuerung wird benutzt um eine neue Klasse ordinaler bzw. kardinaler Armutsindices herzuleiten. Diese zwei Klassen sind die ersten additiven Armutsindices die in der Lage sind, sowohl Ungleichheit als auch Korrelationssensitivität zu erfassen. Das dritte Kapitel nutzt das deutsche sozio-ökonomische Panel um zwei ordinale Armutsindices für Deutschland vorzuschlagen, die auf der zuvor entwickelten Methode basieren: den „Deutschen Korrelationssensitiven Armutsindex“ und den „Subjektiven Korrelationssensitiven Armutsindex“. Die beiden Indices werden mit dem offiziellen deutschen Armutsmaß, der Armutsgefährdungsquote, über Dimensionen, Regionen und über die Zeit hinweg verglichen. Die Resultate zeigen vor allem eines: die signifikanten Unterschiede in der Beurteilung von Armut und Armutstrends die durch die verschiedenen Indices versursacht werden und den hohen Mehrwert den die Operationalisierung des Capability Approachs darstellt.