Principal Investigator: Sabina Alkire. Lead Organisation: University of Oxford
The field of multidimensional poverty measurement is developing very quickly. OPHI has become a lead actor in this work, due to innovative methodologies and empirical applications at the national and international level, including official national multidimensional poverty measures, an international Multidimensional Poverty Index for 109 developing countries, and tailored indices such as one relating to women’s empowerment in agriculture. But many methodological issues remain in this new and fast-growing field . Under this ESRC-DFID research project, OPHI is developing new methodologies related to multidimensional poverty measurement and analysis corresponding to three themes:
- weights, trade-offs, and policy incentives in multidimensional poverty measures
- multidimensional poverty dynamics
- multidimensional poverty and welfare economics
The project is generating working papers, academic publications, and web resources in each of these three areas. Periodic research workshops convene collaborating researchers of diverse ages and backgrounds to finalise papers. OPHI researchers are simultaneously offering intensive training courses, online materials, and direct support to research users. Hence as the methodologies and results emerge, they are naturally and organically being incorporated in these other activities, leading to impact.
As this research project uses secondary data only, no research ethics clearances are required for it.