Moving from the Household to the Individual: Multidimensional Poverty Analysis

TL;DR

This paper develops an individual-level multidimensional poverty measure in Karnataka, India, revealing significant gender disparities and misclassification issues overlooked by traditional household-based assessments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel individual-level multidimensional poverty measure using new survey data, highlighting gender differences and potential misclassification in poverty assessment.

Findings

Gender differences in poverty are masked at the household level.

Significant misclassification of poor individuals as non-poor occurs when using household measures.

Individual-level assessment reveals more accurate and gender-sensitive poverty insights.

Abstract

Current multidimensional measures of poverty continue to follow the traditional income poverty approach of using household rather than the individual as the unit of analysis. Household level measures are gender blind since they ignore intra-household differences in resource allocation which have been shown to differ along gender lines. In this study we use new data from the Karnataka Household Asset Survey (KHAS) to construct an individual level multidimensional poverty measure for Karnataka, India. Our results show that an individual level measure can identify substantial gender differences in poverty that are masked at the household level. We also find a large potential for misclassification of poor individuals as non-poor when poverty is not assessed at the individual level.