Foster is a professor of economics and international affairs at George Washington University. He recently worked on a project to broaden the way countries measure poverty, with the hope that they’ll be better prepared to address its causes.
If basing poverty on income alone is inadequate, what else ought it include?
We’ve included social dimensions — things like access to health services, social security, food, education and other social services, and quality of living spaces. There are other dimensions you could imagine, but measuring anything is a compromise between what’s best and what’s available in data form.
Has anyone opted to use the research?
Yes. Mexico recently asked us to create a new metric for them.
What’s wrong with using income alone as a measure?
Income misses a lot, especially in developing countries. For example, in India the poverty rate has fallen dramatically between 1991 and today, but the rate of child malnourishment hasn’t budged — it’s remained just below 50 percent. People are saying how great it is that poverty is falling, but on the ground the poor don’t see it that way.
How do you hope this affects how issues of poverty are addressed around the world?
Take two identical countries, one with an income-based measure and one with multidimensional approach. Imagine they both do the right thing trying to improve education and health of the poor, and they invest heavily in those things. In one country, that wouldn’t affect the poverty level at all, at least not until [many years] later. But for the country that had in its definition of poverty whether or not people were able to achieve a minimum level of education, for example, within a short period of time that government would be rewarded by having a lower level of poverty. – Leah Fabel
