IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jecomi/v11y2023i4p110-d1115909.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Causes and Measures of Poverty, Inequality, and Social Exclusion: A Review

Author

Listed:
  • George E. Halkos

    (Laboratory of Operations Research, Department of Economics, University of Thessaly, 28 Octobriou 78, 38333 Volos, Greece)

  • Panagiotis-Stavros C. Aslanidis

    (Laboratory of Operations Research, Department of Economics, University of Thessaly, 28 Octobriou 78, 38333 Volos, Greece)

Abstract

Prevailing measures on the topics of monetary and non-monetary poverty—as well as economic and carbon inequality—are being critically assessed under sustainable development goals (SDGs) with a worldwide perspective. On the one hand, the poverty headcount ratio and the indices poverty gap, poverty severity, and Watts are assessed as core poverty indices. On the other hand, important inequality measures such as the Gini index and the Palma ratio are evaluated in order to find their potentials for policymaking. Furthermore, social exclusion (with the extreme forms of aporophobia and homelessness) has detrimental ramifications on human wellbeing and disturbs public provision policies. Thus, poverty, inequality, and social exclusion are integral parts of SDGs (1, 6 and 10), emphasizing the multidisciplinary nature of the above issues. Additionally, intrinsic elements of Agenda 2030 and the measuring of poverty, inequality, and polarization would significantly improve integrated policy pathways in the national and international fora.

Suggested Citation

  • George E. Halkos & Panagiotis-Stavros C. Aslanidis, 2023. "Causes and Measures of Poverty, Inequality, and Social Exclusion: A Review," Economies, MDPI, vol. 11(4), pages 1-25, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jecomi:v:11:y:2023:i:4:p:110-:d:1115909
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/11/4/110/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/11/4/110/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wolfson, Michael C, 1994. "When Inequalities Diverge," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(2), pages 353-358, May.
    2. Cowell, F.A., 2000. "Measurement of inequality," Handbook of Income Distribution, in: A.B. Atkinson & F. Bourguignon (ed.), Handbook of Income Distribution, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 87-166, Elsevier.
    3. Dominique Thon, 1979. "On Measuring Poverty," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 25(4), pages 429-439, December.
    4. Judith Derndorfer & Stefan Kranzinger, 2021. "The Decline of the Middle Class: New Evidence for Europe," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(4), pages 914-938, October.
    5. Ravallion, Martin & Chen, Shaohua, 2003. "Measuring pro-poor growth," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 93-99, January.
    6. Martin Ravallion, 2018. "Inequality and Globalization: A Review Essay," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(2), pages 620-642, June.
    7. Martin Ravallion, 2020. "On Measuring Global Poverty," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 12(1), pages 167-188, August.
    8. Donaldson, David & Weymark, John A, 1986. "Properties of Fixed-Population Poverty Indices," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 27(3), pages 667-688, October.
    9. Ravallion, Martin & Chen, Shaohua, 1997. "What Can New Survey Data Tell Us about Recent Changes in Distribution and Poverty?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 11(2), pages 357-382, May.
    10. Bourguignon, Francois & Fields, Gary, 1997. "Discontinuous losses from poverty, generalized P[alpha] measures, and optimal transfers to the poor," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 155-175, January.
    11. Jenkins, Stephen P., 2022. "Getting the Measure of Inequality," IZA Discussion Papers 14996, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Foster, James E & Shorrocks, Anthony F, 1991. "Subgroup Consistent Poverty Indices," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(3), pages 687-709, May.
    13. Clifford, Brendan & Wilson, Andrew & Harris, Patrick, 2019. "Homelessness, health and the policy process: A literature review," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 123(11), pages 1125-1132.
    14. Gaetano Pietra, 2014. "On the relationships between variability indices (Note I)," METRON, Springer;Sapienza Università di Roma, vol. 72(1), pages 5-16, April.
    15. Levy, Frank & Murnane, Richard J, 1992. "U.S. Earnings Levels and Earnings Inequality: A Review of Recent Trends and Proposed Explanations," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 30(3), pages 1333-1381, September.
    16. Catherine Hastings, 2021. "Homelessness and critical realism: a search for richer explanations," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(5), pages 737-757, May.
    17. Thon, Dominique, 1979. "On Measuring Poverty," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 25(4), pages 429-439, December.
    18. Sabina Alkire & Fanni Kövesdi & Elina Scheja & Frank Vollmer, 2023. "Moderate Multidimensional Poverty Index: Paving the Way Out of Poverty," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 168(1), pages 409-445, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. George E. Halkos & Panagiotis-Stavros C. Aslanidis, 2023. "Addressing Multidimensional Energy Poverty Implications on Achieving Sustainable Development," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(9), pages 1-30, April.
    2. Phoebe Koundouri & Panagiotis Stavros Aslanidis & Konstantinos Dellis & Georgios Feretzakis & Angelos Plataniotis, 2024. "Uncovering the SDG content of Human Security Policies through a Machine Learning web application," DEOS Working Papers 2406, Athens University of Economics and Business.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. James E. Foster & Joel Greer & Erik Thorbecke, 2010. "The Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) Poverty Measures: Twenty-Five Years Later," Working Papers 2010-14, The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy.
    2. Chakravarty, Satya R. & D'Ambrosio, Conchita, 2013. "An axiomatic approach to the measurement of poverty reduction failure," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 874-880.
    3. James Foster & Joel Greer & Erik Thorbecke, 2010. "The Foster–Greer–Thorbecke (FGT) poverty measures: 25 years later," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 8(4), pages 491-524, December.
    4. Sreenivasan Subramanian, 2004. "Indicators of Inequality and Poverty," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2004-25, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    5. Sabina Alkire and James Foster, 2016. "Dimensional and Distributional Contributions to Multidimensional Poverty," OPHI Working Papers ophiwp100_2.pdf, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
    6. Tomasz Panek, 2019. "Czy wzrost gospodarczy w Polsce w latach 2005 -2015 był korzystny dla ubogich?," Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, issue 2, pages 5-39.
    7. Osberg, Lars, 2002. "Trends in poverty: the UK in international perspective: how rates mislead and intensity matters," ISER Working Paper Series 2002-10, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    8. Russell Davidson & Jean-Yves Duclos, 2000. "Statistical Inference for Stochastic Dominance and for the Measurement of Poverty and Inequality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(6), pages 1435-1464, November.
    9. Arthur Charpentier & Stéphane Mussard, 2011. "Income inequality games," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(4), pages 529-554, December.
    10. ALi Abdel Gadir Ali, "undated". "Poverty in the Arab Region: A Selective Review," API-Working Paper Series 0402, Arab Planning Institute - Kuwait, Information Center.
    11. Lars Osberg & Kuan Xu, 1999. "Poverty Intensity: How Well Do Canadian Provinces Compare?," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 25(2), pages 179-195, June.
    12. Ravallion, Martin & Chen, Shaohua, 2022. "Fleshing out the olive? Observations on income polarization in China since 1981," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    13. François Bourguignon & Satya R. Chakravarty, 2019. "The Measurement of Multidimensional Poverty," Themes in Economics, in: Satya R. Chakravarty (ed.), Poverty, Social Exclusion and Stochastic Dominance, pages 83-107, Springer.
    14. Zheng, Buhong, 2000. "Minimum Distribution-Sensitivity, Poverty Aversion, and Poverty Orderings," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 116-137, November.
    15. Jean–Yves Duclos & Phillipe Grégoire, 2002. "Absolute and Relative Deprivation and the Measurement of Poverty," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 48(4), pages 471-492, December.
    16. Nicole Hassoun, 2010. "Another Mere Addition Paradox?: Some Reflections on Variable Population Poverty Measurement," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2010-120, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    17. Tomasz Panek, 2018. "Wzrost sprzyjaj¹cy ubogim: koncepcje i pomiar dla polski w latach 2005-2015," Working Papers 80, Institute of Statistics and Demography, Warsaw School of Economics.
    18. Leonardo Gasparini & Federico Gutiérrez & Leopoldo Tornarolli, 2007. "Growth And Income Poverty In Latin America And The Caribbean: Evidence From Household Surveys," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 53(2), pages 209-245, June.
    19. Albarrán, Pedro & Ortuño, Ignacio & Ruiz-Castillo, Javier, 2011. "The measurement of low- and high-impact in citation distributions: Technical results," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 48-63.
    20. Satya R. Chakravarty & Pietro Muliere, 2004. "Welfare indicators: a review and new perspectives. 2. Measurement of poverty," Metron - International Journal of Statistics, Dipartimento di Statistica, Probabilità e Statistiche Applicate - University of Rome, vol. 0(2), pages 247-281.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    poverty; income inequality; wealth inequality; polarization; social exclusion; homelessness; aporophobia; G20;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G20 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jecomi:v:11:y:2023:i:4:p:110-:d:1115909. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.