Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-cfpbc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T14:52:39.444Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

POVERTY MEASUREMENT: PRIORITARIANISM, SUFFICIENCY AND THE ‘I'S OF POVERTY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2011

Lucio Esposito  and
Peter J. Lambert
Lucio Esposito
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Peter J. Lambert
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The seminal contribution of Sen (1976) led to a new way to conceptualize and measure absolute poverty, by arguing for the need to ‘take note of the inequality among the poor’ (Sen 1976: 227). Since then, the ‘Inequality’ of poverty has become the third ‘I’ of poverty, which together with the ‘Incidence’ and the ‘Intensity’ of it constitute the dimensions deemed relevant for poverty evaluation. In this paper, we first argue that the interest in the third ‘I’ of poverty actually originates from a prioritarian (Parfit 1995) rather than an egalitarian attitude. Further, we illustrate the inability of the three ‘I's to fully comprise the criteria for the assessment of poverty which are de facto adopted by existing poverty indices. Some of them resolve distributional conflicts by following leximin, hence assigning a pivotal role to the worst off. We question the desirability of leximin, and conclude that giving absolute priority to the worst off is plausible only in cases where the latter has been identified by an exogenous threshold demarcating a significant difference in human suffering. Finally, we explore to what extent prioritarianism and the sufficiency argument of Frankfurt (1987), Crisp (2003) and Casal (2007) can help conceptualize giving absolute priority to individuals or groups indentified by exogenous (poverty and ultra-poverty) thresholds.

Type
Articles
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , July 2011 , pp. 109 - 121
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Barrett, C. B. and Swallow, B. M. 2006. Fractal poverty traps. World Development 34: 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broome, J. 1991. Weighing Goods. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Broome, J. 2007. Equality versus priority: a useful distinction. In ‘Goodness’ and ‘Fairness’: Ethical Issues in Health Resource Allocation, ed. Wikler, D. and Murray, C. J. L.. Geneva: World Health Organization.Google Scholar
Casal, P. 2007. Why sufficiency is not enough. Ethics 17: 296–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, S., Hemming, R. and Ulph, D. 1981. On indices for the measurement of poverty. Economic Journal 91: 515–526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cornia, G. A. 1994. Poverty, food consumption, and nutrition during the transition to the market economy in Eastern Europe. American Economic Review 84: 297–302.Google Scholar
Crisp, R. 2003. Equality, priority, and compassion. Ethics 113: 745–763.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donaldson, D. and Weymark, J. A. 1986. Properties of fixed-population poverty indices. International Economic Review 27: 667–688.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duclos, J.-Y. and Grégoire, P. 2002. Absolute and relative deprivation and the measurement of poverty. Review of Income and Wealth 4: 471–492.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, J. E., Greer, J. and Thorbecke, E. 1984. A class of decomposable poverty measures. Econometrica 3: 761–766.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, J. E. and Shorrocks, A. F. 1988. Poverty orderings. Econometrica 56: 173–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, J. E. and Shorrocks, A. F. 1991. Subgroup consistent poverty indices. Econometrica 59: 687–709.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frankfurt, H. 1987. Equality as a moral ideal. Ethics 98: 21–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halder, S. R. and Mosley, P. 2004. Working with the ultra-poor: learning from BRAC experiences. Journal of International Development 16: 387–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, S. P. and Lambert, P. J. 1997. Three ‘I's of poverty curves, with an analysis of UK poverty trends. Oxford Economic Papers 49: 317–327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kakwani, N. 1980. On a class of poverty measures. Econometrica 48: 437–446.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kakwani, N. 1993a. Statistical inference in the measurement of poverty. Review of Economics and Statistics 75: 632–639.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kakwani, N. 1993b. Poverty and economic growth with application to Cote D'Ivoire. Review of Income and Wealth 39: 121–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kakwani, N. 1996. Income inequality, welfare and poverty in Ukraine. Development and Change 27: 663–691.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keen, M. 1992. Needs and targeting. Economic Journal 102: 67–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klasen, S. 1997. Poverty, inequality and deprivation in South Africa: an analysis of the 1993 Saldru Survey. Social Indicators Research 41: 51–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kundu, A. and Smith, T. E. 1983. An impossibility theorem on poverty indices. International Economic Review 24: 423–434.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipton, M. 1983. Poverty, undernutrition, and hunger. World Bank Staff Working Paper No. 597. Washington, DC: World Bank.Google Scholar
Lipton, M. 1988. Concepts, Thresholds and Equity Conflicts. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute.Google Scholar
Musgrave, R. A. 1990. Horizontal equity, once more. National Tax Journal 2: 113–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parfit, D. 1995. Equality or priority? Lindley Lecture, University of Kansas. Reprinted in The Ideal of Equality, ed. Clayton, M. and Williams, A.. New York: St Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Parfit, D. 1997. Equality and priority. Ratio 10: 202–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ravallion, M. 1996. Issues in measuring and modelling poverty. Economic Journal 106: 1328–1343.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, A. K. 1976. Poverty: an ordinal approach to measurement. Econometrica 2: 219–231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, A. K. 1979. Issues in the measurement of poverty. Scandinavian Journal of Economics 81: 285–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sen, A. K. 1983. Poor, relatively speaking. Oxford Economic Papers 35: 153–169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thuysbaert, B. 2008. Inference for the measurement of poverty in the presence of a stochastic weighting variable. Journal of Economic Inequality 6: 33–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tungodden, B. 1998. Poverty and justice: a Rawlsian framework. Nordic Journal of Political Economy 23: 89–105.Google Scholar
Tungodden, B. 1999. Rawlsian reasoning and the distribution problem. Social Choice and Welfare 16: 599–614.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tungodden, B. 2003. The value of equality. Economics and Philosophy 19: 1–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tungodden, B. and Vallentyne, P. 2005. On the possibility of Paretian egalitarianism. Journal of Philosophy 102: 126–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vallentyne, P. 2003. Justice in general: an introduction. In Equality and Justice: Justice in General, ed. Vallentyne, P.. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Zheng, B. 1994. Can a poverty index be both relative and absolute? Econometrica 62: 1453–1458.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zheng, B. 1997. Aggregate poverty measures. Journal of Economic Surveys 2: 123–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zheng, B. 2000. Minimum distribution-sensitivity, poverty aversion and poverty orderings. Journal of Economic Theory 95: 116–137.CrossRefGoogle Scholar