Counting poverty measures have gained prominence in the analysis of multidimensional poverty in recent decades. Poverty orderings based on these measures typically depend on methodological choices regarding individual poverty
functions, poverty cut-offs, and dimensional weights whose impact on poverty
rankings is often not well understood. In this paper we propose new dominance
conditions that allow the analyst to evaluate the robustness of poverty comparisons to those choices. These conditions provide an approach to evaluating the
sensitivity of poverty orderings superior to the common approach of considering
a restricted and arbitrary set of indices, cut-offs, and weights. The new criteria
apply to a broad class of counting poverty measures widely used in empirical
analysis of poverty in developed and developing countries including the multidimensional headcount and the adjusted headcount ratios. We illustrate these
methods with an application to time-trends in poverty in Australia and crossregional poverty in Peru. Our results highlight the potentially large sensitivity
of poverty orderings based on counting measures and the importance of evaluating the robustness of results when performing poverty comparisons across
time and regions.
Funding
Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (project number CE140100027)
European Regional Development Fund (ECO2016-76506-C4-2-R)
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