Moving from the household to the individual: multidimensional poverty analysis

Abstract

Due to data limitations, current multidimensional measures of poverty use household rather than the individual as the unit of analysis. Household measures are unable to capture intrahousehold differences in resource allocation which differ along gender lines. This paper uses data from the Karnataka Household Asset Survey to construct an individual level multidimensional poverty measure for Karnataka, India. Our results show that individual level measures can identify substantial gender differences in poverty that are masked when using household measures. Thus, gender-disaggregated data and analysis can provide a useful complement to household level poverty measures.