Organised by OPHI and hosted at the Department of International Development, University of Oxford, 11-23 August
- View videos, presentations, exercises and other materials from the summer school
- Watch interviews with the summer school participants
The purpose of this intensive summer school was to provide a thorough conceptual and technical introduction to some techniques of measuring multidimensional poverty with a strong emphasis on the Alkire Foster method. Participants revised axiomatic poverty measures, and learnt about different techniques of multidimensional poverty measurement and which problems they are best suited to solve. The empirical motivation for measuring multidimensional poverty was presented as well as the conceptual motivation, which drew on Amartya Sen’s capability approach.
The following topics were covered:
- Axiomatic approaches to unidimensional and multidimensional poverty;
- 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;
- Selection of parameters – purpose, unit of measure, dimensions, indicators, cut-offs and weights;
- Subgroup decomposition and mapping;
- Multidimensional poverty dynamics;
- Disparity among the poor and across groups;
- Econometric analysis of multidimensional poverty; and
- Institutions, policies, and communication.
The summer school was completed by some 64 participants, coming from 34 countries. Thirty-one participants were women. OPHI instructors included Sabina Alkire, Mauricio Apablaza, Mihika Chatterjee, Adriana Conconi, John Hammock, Bouba Housseini, Gisela Robles, Suman Seth and Ana Vaz.
Read a blog post on the summer school by OPHI director Sabina Alkire and sign up for the OPHI e-update for information on upcoming training courses.
OPHI Summer School Materials 2014
Key resources
- Summer school programme and reading lists
- Calculating the MPI in Stata (do-file): Deprivation matrix, decompositions by population subgroup and dimensions and robustness analysis
Pre-Summer School Readings
- ‘The Capability Approach to the Quality of Life’, Sabina Alkire (2008)
- ‘Counting and Multidimensional Poverty’, Sabina Alkire and James Foster (2009)
- ‘Training Material for Producing National Human Development Reports’, Sabina Alkire and Maria Emma Santos (2011)
Presentations and exercises
| Day 1 | Video | |
| Why Multidimensional (MD) Poverty Measures? (Sabina Alkire) |  |
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| Unidimensional Poverty Measurement (Suman Seth) | |
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| Properties of Multidimensional Poverty (Suman Seth) | |
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| Day 2 | Video | |
| Multidimensional Poverty Measurement Methodologies (Sabina Alkire) | |
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| Case Studies: International MPI and Databank (Adriana Conconi, Ana Vaz and Mihika Chatterjee) | |
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| Alkire-Foster (AF) Methodology (Ana Vaz) | |
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| Exercises on AF Methodology | |
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| Day 3 | Video | |
| Solving exercises on AF Methodology (Mihika Chatterjee) | |
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| Introduction to the Capability Approach (Sabina Alkire) | |
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| Normative issues in Multidimensional Poverty Measurement (Sabina Alkire) | |
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| Case Studies: National MD Poverty Measures (Ana Vaz, Adriana Conconi, Gisela Robles and Mihika Chatterjee) – for material covered in this presentation see the Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network website and videos from the Network’s launch events. See also materials on the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index. | |
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| Day 4 | Video | |
| Working in groups: Normative Issues | |
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| Data Issues in Multidimensional Poverty Measurement (Adriana Conconi and Ana Vaz) | |
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| STATA Lab and Descriptive Statistics (Adriana Conconi, Ana Vaz and Mihika Chatterjee) – download basic STATA commands and sample do-file | |
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| Day 5 | Video | |
| Associations across Deprivations (Sabina Alkire and Ana Vaz) | |
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| Working in groups: Creating the Deprivation Matrix (Mauricio Apablaza) – example with the sample dataset | |
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| Day 7 | Video | |
| Population Subgroup Decomposition and Dimensional Breakdown (Suman Seth) | |
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| Day 8 | Video | |
| Robustness Analysis & Statistical Inference (Suman Seth and Bouba Housseini) | |
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| Multidimensional Poverty Dynamics with Time Series and Panel Data (Sabina Alkire and Ana Vaz) | |
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| Interpreting the MPI Results (Mauricio Apablaza) | |
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| Day 9 | Video | |
| Inequality among the Poor (Suman Seth) | |
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| Regression Analysis (Bouba Housseini and Sabina Alkire) | |
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| Policy and Communication (Paddy Coulter and John Hammock) | |
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| Day 10 | Video | |
| Targeting and Impact Evaluation (Sabina Alkire and Ana Vaz) | |
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| Institutions and Policy (John Hammock and Mauricio Apablaza) | |
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| Review of the Course (Sabina Alkire) | |
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