Chapter 2 Multidimensional poverty among children in Uruguay

The multidimensional nature of well-being is now widely recognized. However, multidimensional poverty measurement is still an expanding field of research and a consensus about the “best” composite indicator has not yet emerged. In this chapter, we provide an empirical analysis using three existing methodologies: Bourguignon and Chakravarty (2003), Alkire and Foster (2007), and Lemmi (2005); Chiappero Martinetti (2000). We present an empirical study of the convergence and divergence of poverty profiles for children in Uruguay considering the following dimensions: nutritional status, child educational achievement, housing condition, and household income. Our data gather information of 1,185 children attending public schools in Montevideo and the surrounding metropolitan area, and were specially gathered to carry out a multidimensional analysis of poverty. Our results indicate that the three families of indexes yield very different cardinalizations of poverty. At the same time, the correlation coefficients among the three groups of measures for the generalized headcount ratio also highlight important differences in the children labeled as “more deprived.” For the generalized severity and intensity indexes the correlation coefficients increase significantly suggesting a high level of concordance among the three measures, particularly among the Bourguignon and Chakravarty methodology and the Alkire and Foster one.