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A general class of poverty measures

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Abstract

Measurement of poverty in the spirit of Sen essentially consists of two steps, namely (1) the identification of the poor and (2) the aggregation of the income distribution of the poor into an indicator called poverty measure. We contribute to the second step from a mathematical and statistical point of view by defining a class of poverty measures and investigating its properties including sensitivity with respect to changes in the income distribution. Various poverty orderings are defined and their relation to stochastic dominance is investigated. Finally estimation of the class of poverty measures from individual and grouped data is considered.

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Schmid, F. A general class of poverty measures. Statistical Papers 34, 189–211 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02925542

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