Poverty Definition: (Chambers, 2006) It depends on who asks the questions, how it is understood and how people respond

to it. Nevertheless, some of the common meanings include income less than US1 per day, not having enough to eat or remain healthy, perceived social exclusion etc. Income Poverty Measures (Thick/ Absolute) Rowntrees study minimum amount of income a person needs to get enough nutrition to stay alive Human Development Measures (Thin/Relative) Booths Survey assessed poverty in London based on data obtained from school visitors, supplemented by other evidence in the process of triangulation Sen Capability deprivation, ie what a person can/ cannot do / become.

Measuring Poverty (Indicators) need to be EASY and SMART (Maxwell, 1999) EASY economic, appropriate, simple, yearly SMART stretching, measurable, agreed, recorded, time limited USD1 a day percentage of population living on less than $1.08 a day at 1993 international prices (United Nations Development Group, 2003) Simple Easy to measure Takes into account inflation Risk of reductionist approach (Maxwell, 1999) Was derived based on the median of 10 of the lowest national poverty lines in the world (Edward, 2006) considerably low, morally justifiable?? Focus on job creation Human Poverty Index a aggregate measure of life expectancy, illiteracy and access to a decent level of standard of living (Lundi, Bird, 2007) Poverty is multidimensional in aspect, so using an indicator which is also multidimensional would give a better picture; moreover some things cannot be measured quantitatively Residents of countries with similar levels of GDP per capita have different standard of living More data available (102 compared to 94 above) (Fukuda-Parr, 2006) Hard to measure, based on peoples perspectives Highly time and resource consuming Easier to focus on areas of development for policy making Assess UNs decision to choose USD1 per day as the headline measure of MDG Simple Easy to measure Takes into account inflation Result: Increases confidence in UN just focusing on 1 measure Painting a better picture than what really is Less clear on what kind of policy should be made to increase living standards of people Was derived based on the median of 10 of the lowest national poverty lines in the world (Poverty in focus, 2006) considerably low, morally justifiable??

 Must remember that poverty depends on peoples perceptions and are multidimensional in aspects and causes, so should definitely utilize measures which have relative elements in it take into acc more issues, but still has an income element in it, because income is an important aspect too allows focus on policy making too