Abstract
Summary Although poverty is widely recognised as a multidimensional phenomenon, we still believe that monetary aspect has a fundamental role and therefore deserves a special treatment. For this reason we propose an individual unidimensional measure according to a fuzzy approach that, unlike conventional methods, is consistent with the vague nature of poverty and preserves all the available statistical information. Referred to the overall population, we use an Information Theory approach to design unidimensional fuzzy collective index. The methodology proposed here is illustrated by means of the Tunisia case.
Highlights
One of the most intractable problems facing researchers and policy makers in the areas of social security and public policy is the identification of “the poor” and the measurement of the extent of poverty
The estimated food poverty lines for the 5 regions of Tunisia are presented in the first column of Table 1.6 We observe that in 1990 for the “Greater Tunis” region, for example, any household whose annual expenditure is lower than 280DT is considered poor and its degree of membership to the fuzzy subset “Strong Privation” is very high
In this paper a new fuzzy poverty index based only on a monetary variable is proposed. This index depends on the definition of a membership function and relative entropy
Summary
One of the most intractable problems facing researchers and policy makers in the areas of social security and public policy is the identification of “the poor” and the measurement of the extent of poverty. A number of different approaches to the derivation of a poverty line and the measurement of poverty have been proposed and applied Cerioli and Zani’s original proposal was later developed by Cheli and Lemmi (1995) giving origin to the so called Totally Fuzzy and Relative (TFR) approach Both methods have been applied by a number of authors subsequently, with a preference for the TFR version (for instance, Chiappero Martinetti, 2000). From this point on, the methodological implementation of this approach has developed in two directions, with somewhat different emphasis despite their common orientation and framework.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
