Approaches to the Measurement of Poverty

Abstract

While concern for the poor has been a characteristic of many civilisations, it has been a public issue only in the last 100 years or so. In any case, in the earlier period, lacking objective data describing the circumstance of the poor, social scientists were circumscribed in their efforts to study it. However in recent times a large range of techniques have been devised to measure poverty in both developed and undeveloped countries. Poverty research has broadly proceeded from perspectives in two main disciplines, social policy and economics. The primary motivating force of social policy studies has been the observed deprivation of individuals and families. A major drawback of these studies is that while the observations have been broad and encompassing for the target group under study, the tools and methods have been generally subjective. Consequently it has not been easy to either relate the studies to one another or to form an overall impression.