Poverty, sans the threshold

MEASUREMENT OF poverty is a fundamental exercise, needed to direct development programmes.

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At the same time, it is a tough task. It is limited broadly to two types of measures—a direct income survey, which is conducted in many advanced economies, and an expenditure survey that can be used as a proxy to gauge income, as seen in India. Based on such surveys, a poverty line is drawn. Those who show income or expenditure below this line are categorised as poor. Both the measures have been tried and tested adequately to such a point that there is hardly any progress in developing other ways of measuring poverty.