Measures of Poverty, Relative-Income-Based

Income is one way to measure poverty. Other ways to measure poverty include consumption, assets, capability (per economist Amartya Sen), hardships, commodities, social exclusion, access to assistance, and more. However, since income is the principal means for measuring poverty, one should consider how different methods of measuring income impact differently on these other measures. In economies with high per capita gross domestic product (GDP), deprivation resulting from relatively low income often bears more significantly on poverty than does low income in itself. Sen, for example, contends that gross income inequality may lead to severe deprivation of the capability to function. The issue is not merely lack of income, but the vast disparity between low-income and median-income households. One understands neither the limits nor the full ...