Recent studies of poverty recognize its multidimensional character, and the multiple sources of deprivation.¹ Although there have been efforts to introduce different indicators that encompass these, poverty statistics still rely heavily on issues of income and consumption. The dominant approach to the measurement of poverty continues to be the use of a poverty line as a basis for classifying households (or individuals) as being either poor or non-poor.² Yet poverty involves a broad spectrum of variables concerning access to health care, education, secure and adequate-quality housing, opportunities, economic and social security and “voice”.

How poverty is understood and measured has...

A significant proportion of the region’s population remains very poor. Estimates for 2006 indicated that 36.5% of the region’s population (194 million people) were living in poverty, with 13.4% (71 million people) in extreme poverty.¹⁸ In 2008, the estimates suggested 33% (180 million people) living in poverty and 12.9% (70.4 million people) in extreme poverty. Figures indicate a slow-down in poverty reduction and in the case of extreme poverty a reversal of what had been declining levels since 2002, mainly due to increasing food prices and therefore in the cost of the basic food basket (the exceptions being Brazil, Paraguay...

In Argentina, poverty is measured using both PL and UBN methods, as described above. The UBN incorporates a set of indicators (housing conditions, access to sanitary services, education and stable employment) that are recorded by the National Housing and Population Census (Censo Nacional de Población, Hogares y Viviendas — CNPyV) every 10 years. For the National Institute of Statistics and Census (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos de Argentina — INDEC),⁴⁷ a household is poor by UBN⁴⁸ if it is experiencing at least one of the following:

critical overcrowding — more than three persons per room

inadequate housing, defined as...

One of the aims of this paper is to broaden the understanding and measurement of poverty and so to consider different aspects of deprivation, especially how these are “lived” by members of low-income households. Here we consider eight aspects of deprivation, as follows.⁶⁵

1. Inadequate and often unstable income (thus inadequate consumption of necessities, problems of indebtedness, and incapacity to afford rising prices).

2. Poor-quality and often insecure, hazardous and overcrowded housing.

3. Inadequate provision of “public” infrastructure (including piped water, sanitation, drainage, roads and footpaths, waste collection).

4. Inadequate provision of basic services (health care, emergency services, schools, training, transportation and communication, law...

Poverty lines and measurements of unsatisfied basic needs are meant to guide social and infrastructure policies and programmes. None of the public social and infrastructure programmes that we know in the different municipalities in Greater Buenos Aires use the poverty lines to determine target populations and intervention areas. Housing and infrastructure programmes implemented at the local level may draw initially on UBN and later become more refined through the application of a local diagnosis. In recent years, national programmes (including housing, infrastructure and social programmes), although financed through national or provincial governments, have been implemented by local governments. In theory,...

How poverty is understood and measured influences the choice of policies aimed at addressing or reducing it, yet the dominant approach in Argentina and most other countries is still to rely on narrowly focused indicators of income and consumption. In the international arena, a country´s performance is often measured against how much it manages to reduce indicators of poverty and how well targeted are its poverty eradication or social policies. Similarly, internationally funded social programmes are assessed for their impact on poverty alleviation — based on narrowly focused poverty statistics. There have been efforts to measure other aspects of deprivation...