Multidimensional Poverty: Measurement, Estimation, and Inference

Abstract

Multidimensional poverty measures give rise to a host of statistical hypotheses that are of interest to applied economists and policy-makers alike. In the specific context of the generalized Alkire–Foster (Alkire and Foster, 2008 Alkire , S. , Foster , J. ( 2008 ). Counting and multidimensional poverty measurement. OPHI Working Paper No. 7, University of Oxford . [Google Scholar]) class of measures, we show that many of these hypotheses can be treated in a unified manner and also tested simultaneously using a minimum p-value approach. When applied to study the relative state of poverty among Hindus and Muslims in India, these tests reveal novel insights into the plight of the poor which are not otherwise captured by traditional univariate approaches.