Poverty Decomposition in Incidence, Intensity and Inequality. A Review

Abstract

Every poverty measure should be expressed as a function of three poverty components; incidence, intensity and inequality among the poor. If it is possible, the sources of changes in poverty will be easier to compute, since we are able to know the contribution of each component to the total poverty change. In this paper, firstly we do a review of the existing poverty decompositions in these three terms. Then, we find new decompositions for some poverty measures and additional ones for others. Summarizing, decompositions in the three terms of poverty can be found for almost all the poverty measures.