La medición de la pobreza: una discusión metodológica

This article starts by presenting three related indices of poverty constructed under the condition that each retains the theoretical properties of those prior but introduces important new elements. The first index (P1) accounts simply for the number of people below a given poverty line. The second (P2) is not just sensitive to this but also to increases in the income of the poor which are not sufficient to remove them from poverty. The third (P3) includes the additional property that improvements in the income of the poorest of the poor receive more weight than the same improvement in the better off the poor. A variant of P3 of considerable theoretical interest is also discussed. The choice of an appropriate measure of poverty is not a solution to the problem but an important step forward in that it serves as an indicator of advances.