Coudouel, A., Hentschel, J. S., & Wodon, Q. T. (2002). Poverty measurement and analysis, in the poverty reduction strategy paper sourcebook. Washington: World Bank.
How can you analyse well-being? This chapter provides an introduction to poverty, inequality, and vulnerability analysis and a guide to resources, tools and data sources. It focuses mainly on income and consumption and refers only casually to the other multidimensional aspects of extreme poverty and social exclusion. Poverty profiles are useful for comparing poverty between groups. Different rounds of surveys are useful for comparing poverty over time. Methods of analysing well-being must always be adapted to country circumstances and the availability of data.
Haughton, J., & Khandker, S. R. (2009). Handbook on poverty and inequality. Washington: World Bank.
The Handbook on poverty and inequality provides tools to measure, describe, monitor, evaluate, and analyse poverty and inequality. It evaluates the strengths and weaknesses and different arguments around these different tools. It provides background materials for designing poverty reduction strategies.
Ortiz, I., & Cummins, M. (2011). Global inequality: beyond the bottom billion – A rapid review of income distribution in 141 countries (Social and Economic Policy Working Paper). New York: UNICEF.
What does global inequality look like? This paper provides an overview of global, regional and national income inequalities based on the latest distribution data from the World Bank, UNU-WIDER and Eurostat. The extreme inequality in the distribution of the world’s income brings into question the current development model. Inequality slows economic growth, results in health and social problems and generates political instability. The paper provides income distribution and Gini Index data from 1990-2008 for 136 countries.
Alkire, S., Roche, J. M., Sumner, A. (2013). Where do the world’s multidimensionally poor people live? (Working Paper No. 61). Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI).
Where do the world’s multi-dimensionally (MPI) poor people live? This paper considers the difference in the global distribution of multidimensional poverty and income poverty. Only a quarter of MPI poor people and just one-third of severely MPI poor people live in the world’s poorest countries. The other three-quarters of the world’s MPI poor and two-thirds of the world’s severe MPI poor live in middle income countries, one billion of them in stable middle-income countries.
Anand, S., Segal, P., & Stiglitz, J. E. (Eds.). (2010). Debates on the measurement of global poverty (Initiative for Policy Dialogue Series). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
What is the best way to measure global poverty? How global poverty is measured has presented widely differing estimates about progress towards reducing it. This book sets out the different debates around the measurement and estimation of global poverty. Topics covered include the controversies surrounding the definition of a global poverty line; the use of purchasing power parity exchange rates to map such a poverty line across countries; and the quality and appropriate use of data from national accounts and household surveys.
Chant, S. (Ed.). (2010). The international handbook of gender and poverty: Concepts, research, policy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Attention was focused on gender and poverty when in 1995 it was suggested that women make up to 70 per cent of the world’s poor. The allocation of economic resources among family members usually favours men and women tend to spend a lot of time doing unpaid care work. Women’s paid and unpaid labour is undervalued and gendered inequalities in assets, power, agency and discrimination exist. Lack of data on intra-household inequalities and problems with how poverty is measured means that the real levels of women’s poverty are are underestimated. This book looks at the causes and consequences of gendered poverty, and how they and their interactions can be conceptualised, investigated and measured. It identifies how policy interventions can address the complexities of gendered poverty in a positive and effective way.
Chronic Poverty Research Centre. (2009). The chronic poverty report 2008-09: Escaping poverty traps. Manchester: Chronic Poverty Research Centre.
How can the chronically poor escape poverty? Chronic poverty is a varied and complex phenomenon, but at its root is powerlessness. Poor people expend enormous energy in trying to escape poverty but with few assets, little education, and chronic ill health, their struggle is often unsuccessful. This report draws upon years of research by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre and suggests policies to attack the multiple and overlapping causes of chronic poverty.
Coudouel, A., Hentschel, J. S., & Wodon, Q. T. (2002). Poverty measurement and analysis. In The poverty reduction strategy paper sourcebook. Washington: World Bank.
How can you analyse well-being? This chapter provides an introduction to poverty, inequality, and vulnerability analysis and a guide to resources, tools and data sources. It focuses mainly on income and consumption and refers only casually to the other multidimensional aspects of extreme poverty and social exclusion. Poverty profiles are useful for comparing poverty between groups. Different rounds of surveys are useful for comparing poverty over time. Methods of analysing well-being must always be adapted to country circumstances and the availability of data.
Hulme, D. (2010). Global poverty: How global governance is failing the poor. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
Why has eradiating poverty not been a more urgent global issue? This book outlines how the concept of global poverty eradication has evolved and evaluates institutions and their ability to reduce global poverty. The problem lies not with lack of global resources and technology but with issues of global governance. The world is organised in such a way that huge numbers of people have little or no access to basic human needs.
Norton, A. (2001). A rough guide to PPAs: An introduction to theory and practice. London: ODI.
How can participatory poverty assessments (PPAs) best be used to improve the effectiveness of poverty reduction strategies? This handbook aims to provide practical guidance for development practitioners on conceiving and designing a PPA.
Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Analysing data for twenty countries going back as far as the eighteenth century, this book suggests reasons for the inequalities which exist today. The tendency of returns on capital to exceed the rate of economic growth threatens to generate extreme inequalities that stir discontent and undermine democratic values. Political action could curb the further development of these inequalities.
Poverty Analysis Discussion Group. (2012). Understanding poverty and wellbeing – A note with implications for research and policy. (2012). London: DFID.
What are the key innovations in the meaning and measurement of poverty? What is the future direction for research on poverty? This paper finds that over the last ten years human development concepts and measures have been institutionalised; analysis has increasingly moved beyond correlations to examine causality; dynamic analyses of changes in individual and household conditions are much more common; new multi-dimensional poverty measures have emerged; and approaches to combining quantitative and qualitative methods have advanced. In addition, ethical guidance, data availability and access to analytical software have improved. Future areas for research include the politics of poverty; poverty measurement – including longitudinal quantitative and qualitative research; exclusion and poverty; and pro-poor urbanisation policies.
Ravallion, M., & Chen, S. (2013). A proposal for truly global poverty measures. Global Policy, 4(3), 258-265.
How can the deficiencies of standard absolute poverty measures and standard relative poverty measures be overcome? This article presents a new class of truly global measures that aim to improve the understating of poverty. This allows for the costs of avoiding social exclusion and relative deprivation in both poor and rich countries.
Satterthwaite, D., & Mitlin, D. (2014). Reducing urban poverty in the global south. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.
Increasing numbers of poor people live in urban areas. Despite their proximity to possible advantage, they are highly disadvantaged, with poor or non-existent public services, high levels of violence and desperate living conditions. This book reviews the effectiveness of different approaches (including market approaches, welfare, rights based approaches, and technical/professional support) to reducing urban poverty in the Global South. National and local governments and international organisations can become far more effective at addressing urban poverty at scale by working with and supporting the urban poor and their organisations.
Shepherd, A. (2011). Tackling chronic poverty: The policy implications of research on chronic poverty and poverty dynamics. Manchester: Chronic Poverty Research Centre.
This paper gathers the lessons learnt from the ten years of research by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre. It outlines the changes in policy emphasis required in five key areas to achieve greater progress in the eradication of poverty and deprivation. If the chronically poor are to escape poverty beyond 2015, they require additional policies and political commitment, underpinned by greater understanding and analysis.
Further reading
Alkire, S., & Santos, M. E. (2010). Multidimensional poverty index. Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI), University of Oxford.
Alkire, S., & Sumner, A. (2013). Multidimensional poverty and the post-2015 MDGs. Development, 56(1), 46–51.
Arnold, F., & Hancioglu, A. (n.d.). The state of the art: DHS and MICS.
Asian Development Bank. (2014). Key indicators for Asia and the Pacific 2014. Mandaluyong City, Philippines: ADB.
Brandolini, A., Magri, S., & Smeeding, T. M. (2009). Asset-related measures of poverty and economic stress.
Chambers, R. (1989). Vulnerability, coping and policy. IDS Bulletin, 20(2), 1-7.
Croke, K., Dabalen, A., Demombybes, G., Giugale, M., Hoogeveen, J. (2012). Collecting high frequency panel data in Africa using mobile phone interviews (Policy Research Working Paper 6097). Washington, DC: World Bank.
Dutta, I., Foster, J., & Mishra, A. (2010). On measuring vulnerability to poverty. Social Choice and Welfare, 37, 743-61.
Ferreria, F., & Lugo, M. A. (2012). Multidimensional poverty analysis: Looking for a middle ground. ECINEQ.
Grown, C., Floro, M. S., & Elson, D. (Eds.). (2010). Unpaid work, time use, poverty and public policy [Special Issue]. Feminist Economics, 16(3).
OECD. (2013). Measuring well-being for development (2013 OECD Global Forum on Development discussion paper).Paris: OECD.
OECD. (2013b). OECD guidelines on measuring subjective well-being. Paris: OECD Publishing.
Ravallion, M. (2010). Mashup indices of development (Policy Research Working Paper 5432). Washington, DC: World Bank.
UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2010). Poverty. In The world’s women 2010: Trends and statistics (ch. 8). New York: United Nations.
UNDP. (2014). Human development report 2014: Sustaining human progress: Reducing vulnerabilities and building resilience. New York: UNDP.
UNICEF. (2011). A multidimensional approach to measuring child poverty. New York: UNICEF.
Wellbeing & Poverty Pathways. (2013). An integrated approach to assessing wellbeing (Wellbeing and Poverty Pathways Briefing No. 1 – Revised edition). University of Bath.
