OPHI Summer School 2017
Organised by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), University of Oxford, in partnership with the Moroccan High Commission of Planning (HCP), was held at Hotel Les Jardins de l’Agdal, in Marrakesh, Morocco, 3-15 July 2017.
The purpose of this intensive summer school was to provide a thorough technical and practical introduction to multidimensional poverty measurement with a strong emphasis on the Alkire-Foster method. Drawing on Amartya Sen’s capability approach and empirical examples of national and global Multidimensional Poverty Indices (MPIs), the conceptual and empirical motivation for measuring multidimensional poverty were presented, as well as the full suite of measurement tools including estimation, dimensional breakdown, disaggregation by population subgroup, standard errors and statistical inference, robustness, communications, policy applications and so on.
We are very grateful for the support of the Islamic Development Bank, SESRIC, UNICEF, UNDP, and all the other funders who enabled students to participate in the course. This year’s course included 80 participants from 36 different countries.
The following topics were covered:
- Unidimensional poverty measures;
- Methodologies to analyse multidimensional poverty – dashboard, stochastic dominance, information theory, fuzzy set, multiple correspondence analysis, unmet basic needs and counting approaches – and the problems each methodology best solves;
- The Alkire Foster methodology of multidimensional poverty measurement;
- Measurement design – purpose, unit of measure, dimensions, indicators, cut-offs and weights;
- Estimation of multidimensional poverty and interpretation of the results;
- Subgroup decomposition and mapping;
- Multidimensional poverty changes over time;
- Econometric analysis of multidimensional poverty and impact evaluation;
- Institutions, policies, and communication.
This year’s summer school was part of pre-conference activities of the ISI World Statistics Congress 2017, held in Marrakech (Morocco) from 16 to 21 July 2017. Further information can be found on the conference website: http://www.isi2017.org
The summer school was led by OPHI Director Sabina Alkire and the OPHI team including Adriana Conconi, Bouba Housseini, Usha Kanagaratnam, Bilal Malaeb, Christian Oldiges, Monica Pinilla, and Nicolai Suppa.
Presentations
| Day 1 | |
| Multidimensional Poverty Measures: Motivations & Properties |  |
| Unidimensional Poverty Measures | |
| Day 2 | |
| Multidimensional Poverty Methods & Counting Approaches | |
| Alkire Foster (AF) Methodology | |
| Case Study: the Global MPI | |
| Day 3 | |
| Introduction to the Capability Approach | |
| Normative Issues in Multidimensional Poverty Measurement Design | |
| Case Study: the National MPIs | |
| Day 4 | |
| Data & Indicators | |
| Day 5 | |
| Measures of Association & Redundancy | |
| Day 7 | |
| Decomposition, Maps & Dimensional Breakdown | |
| Day 8 | |
| Sensitivity, Robustness Analysis & Standard Errors | |
| Changes over Time | |
| Day 9 | |
| Regression Analysis | |
| Impact Evaluation | |
| Interpreting & Communicating MPI Results | |
Photos
Click here to see photos from the 2017 Summer School.