Unidimensional Underpinnings of Multidimensional Counting Measures
VENUE CHANGE: This seminar will now take place in the Music Room at Queen Elizabeth House, as well as online as usual.
Traditional unidimensional measures aggregate information at the individual level then gauge poverty in the distribution of a single variable using a poverty line and measurement methodology. This paper provides an intuitive parallel procedure for creating a multidimensional poverty measure from a distribution of aggregate attainments of persons in across dimensions. The paper elaborates the multidimensional properties that follow from properties satisfied by the unidimensional methodology that is applied to that distribution, with the exception of dimensional breakdown which has no unidimensional precursor. Indeed, dimensional breakdown combined with subgroup decomposability seems to be nearly unique to the adjusted headcount ratio and to the unidimensional measure that generates it – the augmented poverty gap – which is a convex combination of the first two FGT measures.

Join us in person (refreshments provided) or online (register for webinar link: bit.ly/4dOcNP4)
Date: 3 December 2024, 16:00
Venue: Queen Elizabeth House, 3 Mansfield Road OX1 3TB
Venue Details: Music Room
Speakers: Professor James Foster (GWU), Professor Sabina Alkire (Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative)
Organising department: Oxford Department of International Development
Organisers: Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), Institute for International Economic Policy at George Washington University
Organiser contact email address: ophi@qeh.ox.ac.uk
Part of: OPHI Weekly Seminars: Multidimensional Poverty
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Public
Editor: Eleanor Duncan