Measuring and characterizing poverty in its eradication context: the limits of classic indicators and new methodological approaches.
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 25 and 26, 2014.
Around 60 experts in social policy and public statistics – in addition to technicians and managers from national and international institutions – participated in the Technical Workshop held by WWP, with support from UNESCO and the World Center for Sustainable Development (RIO+).
The purpose of the meeting was to discuss methodological aspects of income poverty indicators, their statistical accuracy and reach, as well as new measuring proposals based on the experience gained from the host of programs and actions designed and implemented to resolve poverty in Brazil and other countries in the world.
During the two-day event, discussions were held on different conceptual and analytical approaches of a more academic nature, which have been used internationally for studying and measuring hunger, poverty and extreme poverty. Some examples, among others, are: monetary poverty (insufficient available income); malnutrition or food insecurity (insufficient access to – and consumption of – food); multidimensional poverty (failure to meet the basic monetary and non-monetary needs of individuals); relative poverty (relative and not absolute deprivation of income or other socioeconomic dimensions); and subjective poverty (based on self-declared statuses).
The discussions of the first roundtable focused on extreme poverty indicators from a monetary perspective, the size and trajectory of the phenomenon in Brazil and other countries, and key methodological issues in defining the reference food basket – such as upgrading its monetary value and technical procedures for calculating the individual income available for potential consumption.
In the second roundtable, proposals were presented for the sizing of poverty in a multidimensional perspective, the evolution of rates in Brazil and in the world, as well as critical choices about the social dimensions, indicators and weights for each index.
Check out the Technical Workshop presentations by following this link.