Poverty Comparisons Across Populations of Different Sizes

Abstract

The most commonly employed measure of poverty is some headcount of the population in poverty. Should we measure this headcount as a ratio (i.e. as a proportion of the poor population in total population) or as an absolute number of those in poverty? It turns out, as this chapter demonstrates, that the question has a surprising amount of philosophical content in it. These questions of logic and normativity are explored briefly here—and shown to have very substantial implications for our diagnosis of magnitudes and trends of poverty in any specific empirical setting.