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posted by martyb on Sunday November 20 2016, @07:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the how-much-less-do-I-have-than-others dept.

Since social scientists and economists began measuring poverty, the definition has never strayed far from a discussion of income.

New research from Georgia Tech economist Shatakshee Dhongde shows there are multiple components of poverty that more accurately describes a household's economic condition. Dhongde looks at "deprivation" more than simply low income, and her work finds that almost 15 percent of Americans are deprived in multiple dimensions.

"This study approaches poverty in a new way," said Dhongde, who recently published "Multi-Dimensional Deprivation in the U.S." in the journal Social Indicators Research.

"We tried to identify what is missing in the literature on poverty, and measure deprivation in six dimensions: health, education, standard of living, security, social connections, and housing quality. When you look at deprivation in these dimensions, you have a better picture of what is really going on with households, especially in developed countries like the United States."


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 21 2016, @02:35AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 21 2016, @02:35AM (#430280)

    You are probably joking but if not...well...ugh...simple minded foolery...

    Poverty measures are VERY hard to compare worldwide. It is well recognised money measure (e.g. 60% of avg or median wage or similar) is quite obviously BS and subject to too many caveats.

    - If wages go up, so does poverty....even if nothing else changes!
    - Measures of inflations are somewhat arbitrary (in my country house prices are not covered in inflation!) and do not effect all people equally.
    - Tax situations and so forth.
    - Cost of basic services.

    Very hard to wrap this all up with a basic monetary measure that is comparable internationally and across decades and macroeconomic changes

    This seems like a MUCH more sensible measure and a subtle move from blunt, idiotic, measures such as the one above or GDP and a move to sensible, realistic measures like the article states and the "happiness index" respectively.

    Of course neo-libs etc will hate it because poverty is something best ignored....