The Alkire and Foster approach to measuring multidimensional poverty

Book Chapter

Summary *

In this chapter we present a succinct presentation of the AF methodology. In the nextsection we describe the identification method and in the following section the aggregationprocedure: the M α class of measures. Then we give an overview of the properties satisfiedby the class of measures. In the fifth section we focus on the characteristics of the onemeasure that has been most widely implemented – the M 0 measure – and its most salientapplications, giving place to the so-called Multidimensional Poverty Indices (MPIs).We then review the main critiques that the AF methodology has received, and some counterarguments.In particular, we include the specification of a generalization of the M αmeasuresmentioned in AF (2011a). The chapter ends with concluding comments. Information provided by the agent in SIGEVA