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Importance of multidimensional poverty measures

1. Must be part of the measurement of progress/development, along with GDP and inequality: Social contract of countries. 2. Income is important, but other dimensions are important for their own sake. Access to education, health, housing, food are social rights. 3. These measures link measurement to public policy • One of the motivations for the MPI was the importance for public policy in Mexico (2007-8) • Unlike the income measure, with a multidimensional approach, various public programs/actions can be reflected directly in poverty.

Achievements of MPI

• Because of the previous reasons, MPI and similar methods are VERY IMPORTANT TO MEASURE HUMAN PROGRESS.

They are here to stay!

• MPI competes well with the income indicator. We suggest that HDRO continues to use an MPI-type indicator. • MPI based on household survey information, microdata and reliable surveys. Based on household data.

• It is decomposable.

• • •

Using the Mexican experience

Union or Intersection. • Intersection. • Union leads to 90%; thus it is not useful to prioritize public policy; all those in poverty are in fact very different form each other.

H ior M0. • Both! For communications H, but M0 is a neat indicatos. • We use both separately: H and Nr. of average deprivations.

Include inequality. • This is trickier (but Sabina and James may have an idea), • I would introduce it by focusing on extreme poverty explicitly.

Poverty identification

Vulnerable due to social deprivations Non poor and non vulnerable EWL

6 5

POVERTY 46.2 %, 2.5 deprivations on average

4 3 2

Deprivations

Social Rights

Vulnerable due to income

1 • • • • • • 0

Educational gap Access to Health Access to Social Security Quality of Housing Basic services in dwelling Access to Food

Extreme Poverty

EWL MWL

6

Vulnerable people by social deprivations Moderate poverty EXTREME poverty 10.4%; 3.7 deprivations

5 4 3 2

Deprivations

Social Rights

1 0

Non poor and non vulnerable Vulnerable due to income

The paper. Specific comments

• Cooking fuel indicator IN or OUT. • IN. I would not take it out; I accept sometimes is difficult to measure, but this indicator is important for poverty, especially in rural areas.

• Households with non-eligible individuals and economies of scale. • Kalsen’s suggestion might be interesting, but since education, health, food are social rights, we suggest to measure poverty at the individual level. • I would use individual access to education, health, food.

•

Go local

MPI is a global measure; it is important to have global measures for poverty. But there are some difficulties with being global (data, comparability, specific country needs and values..). • • • We also need countries to engage in local measures; countries have always something to say about the way they see themselves.

And they should have also poverty measures at

subnational level!

I would suggest to look at the specific Mexican (and Colombian) case. The measure was thought for public policy purposes and the governments, federal and local, are using it for many purposes