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Poverty as Functioning Deprivation: Global Estimates

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Abstract

Poverty alleviation and eradication have always remained a major challenge for the political leadership at the national and international level. However, no consensus exists about the definition and measurement of poverty. Recent understanding sees poverty as much more than lack of income. Hunger, unemployment and ill heath are just some of many dimensions of poverty. We have contributed to the existing debate by defining poverty as a deprivation of a number of functionings (actual achievements), considered vital but not equally important for human wellbeing, caused by an inadequate command over market or nonmarket resources. We have identified nine basic functionings and corresponding indicators that best reflect these nine basic functionings and develop a composite index of poverty for 193 countries of the world for cross country comparison. We have analyzed poverty for two periods 1990–2000 and 2001–2010 to make an inter-temporal comparison in global poverty. According to our estimates, the global poverty has only modestly come down by 4 percentage points from 35% in 1990–2000 to 31% in 2001–2010. This contrasts sharply with the estimates based on the poverty line of the World Bank that the proportion of population living in extreme poverty has nearly halved from 47% in 1990 to 24% in 2015.

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Notes

  1. We used data up to 2010 to make our index directly comparable with the performance of MDGs.

  2. Access to an improved water Source: refers to the percentage of the population with reasonable access to an adequate amount of water from an improved source, such as a household connection, public standpipe, borehole, protected well or spring, and rainwater collection. Unimproved sources include vendors, tanker trucks, and unprotected wells and springs. Reasonable access is defined as the availability of at least 20 L a person a day from a Source: within 1 km of the dwelling.

  3. http://data.worldbank.org/about/country-and-lending-groups.

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Acknowledgement

We warmly acknowledge the contribution of Dr. Asad Zaman (PIDE, Islamabad) in this study. We are grateful to Sabina Alkire (OPHI, Oxford) for her useful advice on many important issues in this study. We also thank Suman Seth (OPHI, Oxford), Koen Decancq (HDCSP, University of Antwerp) and unknown referees for their valuable comments. All errors are our own. Dr. Faisal Abbas acknowledges the generous fellowship support provided by Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

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Author notes

  1. Faisal Abbas

    Present address: Experienced Research Fellow, Courant Research Center, Poverty, Equity and Growth in transition and developing countries, Department of Economics, George August University, Göttingen, Germany

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management Sciences, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Lahore, Pakistan

    Rafi Amir-ud-Din

  2. Independent Researcher, Islamabad, Pakistan

    Faisal Abbas

  3. Policy Solutions Lab, Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Islamabad, Pakistan

    Sajid Amin Javed

Authors
  1. Rafi Amir-ud-Din
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  2. Faisal Abbas
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  3. Sajid Amin Javed
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rafi Amir-ud-Din.

Appendix

Appendix

See Table 9.

Table 9 List of dimensions and indicators
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Amir-ud-Din, R., Abbas, F. & Javed, S.A. Poverty as Functioning Deprivation: Global Estimates. Soc Indic Res 140, 1077–1108 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-017-1798-7

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