Unidimensional Underpinnings of Multidimensional Counting Measures

We were pleased to invite you to a joint virtual event with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report Office (HDRO) on Monday, October 31st, 2022. This seminar featured speaker James Foster (George Washington University) discussing “Unidimensional Underpinnings of Multidimensional Counting Measures.“

The multidimensional poverty index (MPI) and other counting measures identify and evaluate poverty based on the multiple deprivations experienced by people. Traditional unidimensional measures gauge poverty in a distribution of income (or another variable) using shortfalls from a poverty line. This paper provides an intuitive procedure for transforming unidimensional poverty measures into multidimensional poverty measures by applying a unidimensional measure to an attainment count distribution given a poverty line. The resulting multidimensional measures satisfy ordinality by construction. Other multidimensional properties are assured by their single dimensional counterparts, with the exception of dimensional breakdown which is central to multidimensional poverty but has no unidimensional analogue. Instead, this property is obtained by using an augmented poverty gap or the weight average of the first two FGT measures, which through the transformation generates the MPI.

Speakers:

James Foster is the Oliver T. Carr, Jr., Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Economics at the George Washington University. He is also a Research Associate at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at Oxford University. Professor Foster’s research focuses on welfare economics — using economic tools to evaluate and enhance the wellbeing of people. His work underlies many well-known social indices including the FGT poverty measures, the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), dozens of national MPIs used to guide domestic policy against poverty, the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) at USAID, the Gross National Happiness Index of Bhutan, the Better Jobs Index of the InterAmerican Development Bank, and the Statistical Performance Index of the World Bank. Prof. Foster received his PhD in Economics from Cornell University and has a Doctorate Honoris Causa from Universidad Autónoma del Estado Hidalgo (Mexico).