Monitoring Global Poverty

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Monitoring Global Poverty

extend the approach to cardinal variables that reflect the degree to which people are below the cutoff, but this is not explored further here. That said, what is recommended here in terms of the counting approach would be a major step. The Data Required The creation of the overlapping poverty measure, or of the more general measures of multidimensionality developed by Alkire and Foster (2011a), in one sense raises the stakes with regard to data requirements. In order to ascertain the extent of overlap of deprivation across dimensions, it is necessary to have a data source at the level of the individual or household covering all relevant dimensions. At the same time, the number of questions required per dimension may be considerably less in the case of nonmonetary indicators than is the case with the measurement of consumption for the monetary policy indicator. The multidimensional poverty indicator for Colombia is based on some 38 survey questions, that for Pakistan on 54 survey questions, and for Costa Rica on 77 survey questions.34 The information required to calculate consumption is typically much more extensive. For example, the 1993–94 survey for Cambodia had a detailed consumption recall list of some 450 items (Gibson 2005, 137). Therefore, it should not be assumed that a nonmonetary approach is more data-demanding. Indeed, in the context of Recommendation 14 it is assumed that nonmonetary indicators could form part of the quick surveys. Following Principle 7, use should be made, wherever possible, of information already available. In the construction of multidimensional indexes, a major role has been played by multitopic household surveys containing data for the measurement of nonmonetary variables: the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS), the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), the Living Standard Measurement Survey (LSMS), and the Core Welfare Indicators Questionnaire (CWIQ).35 These have global or multiregional coverage as listed in table 2.6. The scope for using these existing surveys has been usefully summarized by Alkire (2014). By their nature, these surveys score relatively well in terms of international comparability. On the other hand, they are only conducted at intervals. The DHS has taken place, on average, every five


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