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.