The issue of this book is how to define and measure poverty, in relatively rich countries, in a way which is valuable for policy-making. It looks at the identification of the poor to derive an index of poverty, and shows that poverty in developed countries cannot be measured using current income.
Poverty alleviation is a central aim of economic and social policy, and yet there is no consensus about what poverty means or how it is best measured. Often, the households below an income poverty line are counted as poor, but there may be no firm basis for concentrating on that particular income level. There may also be wide variations among the households below any income poverty line in terms of their actual living standards. This book explores what poverty means in developed countries, and shows that understanding and measuring it requires widening the focus beyond current income. By using broader measures of resources and information on living patterns and concrete indicators of deprivation, it shows how those who are effectively excluded from participation in society due to lack of resources can be more accurately identified, and the processes producing such exclusion better understood. The core issue of this book is how to define and measure poverty in relatively rich countries in a way which is valid, meaningful in the context, and valuable for policy-making. Extensive analysis of data from a specially designed survey of a large representative sample of Irish households is used to illustrate the arguments.
Readers of this journal will be all too familiar with the questions which have bedevilled research on poverty ... This authoritative study makes a significant contribution to these and related questions ... This book should make a significant contribution to the analysis of poverty and social inequality. It offers a rigorous, ingenious and original contribution to some of the most stubborn methodological problems in recent poverty research ... For the 'professionals' in the poverty research business ... the book is, quite simply, essential reading.
