
What is Sen’s Sen index?
Amartya Sen developed an index called the Sen index to estimate poverty. The statistical inference procedures are developed for Sen’s distribution-sensitive index of poverty and each of its components- the head count ratio, income gap ratio and the gini index of the poor.
What are the components of the distribution-sensitive index of poverty?
Statistical inference procedures are developed for A. K. Sen's distribution-sensitive index of poverty and each of its components--the headcount ratio, income gap ratio, and the Gini index of the poor.
Is there a class of generalized Sen Poverty Indices?
A generalized Sen poverty index can satisfy key poverty axioms including the transfer axiom which the original Sen index violates. All generalized Sen poverty indices together characterize the censored generalized Lorenz dominance. Utilizing results from partial poverty orderings, we characterize a class of generalized Sen poverty indices.
What is modified Sen index of poverty intensity?
It is also called the modified Sen index of poverty intensity. This index is proposed by Shorrocks (1995) as an extension of the Sen (1976) index. As noted by Zheng (1997), the resulting index is consistent with the limit of another index proposed by Thon (1979).

What is Sen measure of poverty?
Amartya Sen (1983), on the other hand, emphasized that poverty is not just relative, but also absolute. He defined poverty as a failure to achieve certain minimum capabilities and, according to him, the lack of capabilities is absolute. However, capabilities are not fixed over time or over societies.
What do you mean by Sen index?
THE SEN INDEX IS a sophisticated method of measuring the prevalence and severity of poverty in a society. The index was developed in 1976 by Amartya Sen. Sen is a Nobel Laureate in Economics who achieved prominence at Cambridge and Harvard Universities.
Who gave the Sen index?
laureate Amartya SenWorld Bank estimates put the population of global poor at 1.44 billion people--but a recent poverty index based on the work of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, Lamont University Professor and professor of economics and philosophy, raises that number to 1.71 billion.
What is head index index and poverty gap?
The poverty gap index is an improvement over the poverty measure head count ratio which simply counts all the people below a poverty line, in a given population, and considers them equally poor. Poverty gap index estimates the depth of poverty by considering how far, on the average, the poor are from that poverty line.
How is poverty calculated?
A common method used to estimate poverty in India is based on the income or consumption levels and if the income or consumption falls below a given minimum level, then the household is said to be Below the Poverty Line (BPL).
How is poverty ratio calculated?
The poverty rate is the ratio of the number of people (in a given age group) whose income falls below the poverty line; taken as half the median household income of the total population.
What are the 3 types of poverty?
There are multiple types of poverty.Situational poverty.Generational poverty.Absolute poverty.Relative poverty.Urban poverty.Rural poverty.
Why is Amartya Sen famous?
Amartya Sen is famous for his significant contributions to welfare economics (for which he was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in economics), including his development of more sophisticated measures of poverty, and for his work on the causes and prevention of famines.
Where is Amartya Sen now?
Harvard UniversityHe is currently a Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. He formerly served as Master of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge.
What is Amartya Sen economic theory?
Emphasis was placed on economic efficiency – with no explicit role being given to fundamental freedoms, individual agency and human rights. In contrast, Sen's research has highlighted the central idea that, in the final analysis, market outcomes and government actions should be judged in terms of valuable human ends.
What is the theory of Amartya Sen?
Amartya Sen's capability theory approach is a theoretical framework that involves two core normative claims. First, the assumption that freedom to achieve well-being is of primary moral importance. And second, that freedom to achieve well-being must be understood in terms of people with capabilities.
Who is the mother of economics?
Amartya Sen has been called the Mother Teresa of Economics for his work on famine, human development, welfare economics, the underlying mechanisms of poverty, gender inequality, and political liberalism. 2.
Where is Amartya Sen from?
Santiniketan, IndiaAmartya Sen / Place of birthSantiniketan is a neighbourhood of Bolpur town in Bolpur subdivision of Birbhum district in West Bengal, India, approximately 152 km north of Kolkata. Wikipedia
What is the class of generalized Sen poverty index?
The class of generalized Sen poverty indices of (9) contains all known transfer-axiom-satisfying generalizations of the Sen poverty index; for any income distribution, all members of the generalized Sen class uniquely determine its CGL curve; a generalized Sen poverty index satisfies the transfer axiom if and only if w ( p) > 0 for all p ∈ [ 0, 1]
What is the meaning of "n" in poverty index?
•#N#Provides a geometric generalization to the Sen poverty index.#N#•#N#A generalized Sen poverty index can satisfy key poverty axioms including the transfer axiom which the original Sen index violates.#N#•#N#All generalized Sen poverty indices together characterize the censored generalized Lorenz dominance.
What are the three aspects of poverty?
These fundamental results cover all three aspects of poverty measurement: poverty axioms, summary poverty indices and partial poverty orderings . Poverty axioms are desirable properties for a poverty index to satisfy; poverty indices such as the one introduced by Sen (1976) are used to measure the poverty level associated with income distributions; and partial poverty orderings seek dominance conditions such as stochastic dominance and Lorenz dominance that do not rely on individual poverty indices. The three aspects are closely connected: poverty rankings by all summary poverty indices that satisfy certain poverty axioms imply partial poverty orderings, and vice versa. 1
What is poverty index?
In measuring the level of poverty, a poverty line or poverty threshold, usually stated in terms of income, is defined to divide the society into two separate groups. An individual is poor if that individual lives below the poverty line.
What is the headcount ratio of a society?
The traditional poverty index is the headcount ratio, which is the proportion of people in a society who are living in poverty. If n is the total number of people in the society and m is the number of the poor, the headcount ratio is
What is the advantage of TIP curve?
One advantage of using TIP curves, other than the ease of comparison across different income distributions, is that they can be ranked in terms of poverty dominance: given the same poverty line , if the TIP curve for income distribution , ( ; ), is such that ( ; ) ≥ ( ; ), and the inequality is strict for at least some points, then income distribution poverty-dominates income distribution . TIP dominance is equivalent to a unanimous poverty ordering given not only by all FGT indices with ≥ 1, but also other by other poverty indices such as the ones in Chakravarty (1983), Shorrocks (1995), and Watts (1968). ...
Is poverty a challenge?
Though poverty is one of the most challenging problems from which mankind has ever suffered to my knowledge only one economist’s Nobel Lecture has dealt with this provocative issue. It began with the promising statement: “Most of the people in the world are poor, so if we knew the economics of being poor we would know much of the economics that really matters.”1 But then the curious reader will be rather disappointed discovering that this Nobel Lecture is mostly devoted to agricultural economics.
What is poverty gap index?
The poverty gap index is an improvement over the poverty measure head count ratio which simply counts all the people below a poverty line, in a given population, and considers them equally poor. Poverty gap index estimates the depth of poverty by considering how far, on the average, the poor are from that poverty line.
What is the most common method of measuring poverty?
The most common method measuring and reporting poverty is the head count ratio, given as the percentage of population that is below the poverty line. For example, The New York Times in July 2012 reported the poverty head count ratio as 11.1% of American population in 1973, 15.2% in 1983 and 11.3% in 2000. One of the undesirable features of the head count ratio is that it ignores the depth of poverty; if the poor become poorer, the head count index does not change.
Is poverty gap index additive?
The poverty gap index is additive. In other words, the index can be used as an aggregate poverty measure, as well as decomposed for various sub-groups of the population, such as by region, employment sector, education level, gender, age or ethnic group.
Is poverty gap index a qualitative or quantitative measure?
Scholars such as Amartya Sen suggest poverty gap index offers quantitat ive improvement over simply counting the poor below the poverty line, but remains limited at the qualitative level.

Sen and The Human Development Index
- Sen’s work on redefining poverty has had practical implications for policy-making. With Sen’s help, the United Nations established the Human Development Index, which provides a more comprehensive metric of welfare than just income. The index is composed of three parts: 1. Life expectancy at birth 2. Years of schooling per adult and expected schooli...
Poverty as “Capability Deprivation”
- Amartya Sen defines poverty as “capability deprivation,”(he also refers to it as “unfreedom”)— which meanshindering people’s chances to improve their station in life.There are two main benefits to viewing poverty in this way: 1. It considers the intrinsicimportance of freedom, which Sen says all people value. 2. Other factors besides low income contribute to a lack of capability, …
Development as Freedom
- Sen defines development as the process of expanding the freedoms that people can exercise. In contrast, most modern economic literature takes the “income-centered approach” to poverty and economic development. Most analyses by economists and policymakers view per-capita income and GDP growth as the keys to prosperity. However, Sen argues this approach is a deviation fro…
The Headcount Ratio and The income-gap Ratio
- The traditional poverty index is the headcount ratio, which is the proportion of people in a society who are living in poverty. If n is the total number of people in the society and mis the number of the poor, the headcount ratio is Another poverty index that sometimes is used is the income-gap ratio, which is the percentage of the average income shortfall of the poor to the poverty line. If μ…
The Axiomatic Approach
- Since the publication of Amartya Sen’s 1976 work on poverty measurement, the construction and evaluation of poverty indices have followed an axiomatic approach. In this approach, ideal properties for poverty measurement are formulated as axioms and a poverty index is generated to satisfy those axioms. The following are the key axioms for poverty me...
Calculating The Poverty Level
- To calculate the poverty level of a society, one needs to define the poverty line and choose a poverty index. The definition of the poverty line varies from society to society. In the United States the official poverty line initially was developed by Mollie Orshansky of the Social Security Administration in 1963–1964 and adjusted each year thereafter for inflation. The U.S. poverty lin…
Bibliography
- Atkinson, Anthony B. 1987. On the Measurement of Poverty. Econometrica 55 (4): 749–764. Foster, James E., and Anthony Shorrocks. 1988. Poverty Orderings. Econometrica 56 (1): 173–177. Sen, Amartya. 1976. Poverty: An Ordinal Approach to Measurement. Econometrica 44 (2): 219–231. Sen, Amartya. 1997. On Economic Inequality. Expanded ed. Oxford: Clarendon. Bu…