Poverty measurement

The redistributive effect of tax and benefit systems depends heavily on the way in which income is defined, says a new working paper from the Institute for Social and Economic Research.

The paper examines how the distribution of income in three European countries (the UK, Belgium and Greece) changes when the standard definition of disposable income is replaced by a wider definition. The latter takes into account three 'I's – indirect taxes, imputed rent on owner-occupied housing, and in-kind benefits.

The idea that if poverty is relative it will always be with us is a common misconception, argues John Veit-Wilson. 'Relative poverty' can be abolished if no one has fewer resources than needed to achieve that society’s minimum standards.

Counting the number of people living in poverty worldwide is difficult, says a new paper, but there are a number of things that can be done to improve the quality of data.

The paper comes from an independent organisation focusing on the analysis and use of data for the elimination of absolute poverty. It explains how global poverty numbers are obtained; explores weaknesses in the data; and describes the underlying constraints on improving data. It concludes by looking at solutions to these problems, as well as changes in the scope of, and demand for, poverty data.

Some 'encouraging' results have been reported from attempts to compare people's exposure to poverty across different European countries, says a paper from Eurostat, the European Commission's statistical body.

The paper describes methodological work aimed at matching expenditure data (from the Household Budget Survey – HBS) with income and material deprivation data (from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions – EU-SILC). It attempts to do this using 2005 data for the UK.