Multidimensional Poverty: Measurement, Estimation, and Inference

Multidimensional poverty measures give rise to a host of statistical hypotheses which are of interest to applied economists and policy-makers alike. In the specific context of the generalized Alkire-Foster (Alkire and Foster 2008) class of measures, we show that many of these hypotheses can be treated in a unified manner and also tested simultaneously using the minimum p-value methodology of Bennett (2010). When applied to study the relative state of poverty among Hindus and Muslims in India, these tests reveal novel insights into the plight of the poor which are not otherwise captured by traditional univariate approaches.

Citation: Bennett, C.J. and Mitra, S. (2011). 'Multidimensional poverty: Measurement, estimation, and inference', OPHI Working Paper 47, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), University of Oxford.

Also published in Econometric Reviews, 2013, Vol. 32(1), pp. 57–83.