The Bourguignon and Chakravarty multidimensional poverty family

Working Paper 2009-109

Abstract

The family of multidimensional poverty indices introduced by Bourguignon and Chakravarty (Journal of Economic Inequality, 2003) has attracted a great deal of interest in the field of poverty measurement. In this note we explore a number of properties fulfilled by the members of this family, related to both the way to aggregate, for each individual, the deprivations in the various attributes, and the procedure for combining the individuals’ overall deprivations. Then we show that the properties we highlight characterize the functional form of the family.

Authors: Mª Casilda Lasso de la Vega, Ana Urrutia , Henar Diez.