The ways in which poverty is measured can influence how policymakers, researchers, practitioners, and advocates understand what it means to live in poverty and inform their efforts to address it.
In their new Child Trends brief intended for those new to poverty measurement—or those seeking to learn more about appropriate uses of various measures—Yiyu Chen, James Fuller, and Renee Ryberg review absolute and relative poverty measures and provide examples of both. The authors note the uses, strengths, and limitations of each measure and highlight recent progress in improving the ways poverty is measured.
