Measures of Poverty, Direct and Indirect

Alleviating the level of poverty in a country requires identification and measurement of poverty so that the government can promulgate appropriate and effective fiscal and public policies. Governments also rely on accurate evaluation of poverty, as this forms the basis of welfare policies that can best serve populations living below the poverty line. As much as it is an abstract concept, measuring poverty is [Page 1005]imperative for governments as this enables them to design more representative antipoverty legislation.

One-dimensional measures of poverty involve direct and indirect measures which are utilized in order to provide policymakers accurate identifying tools to gauge the extent of the prevalence of poverty. Measurement systems such as these can also shed light on how poverty is defined. Although earlier simplistic measurements have ...