THE EXTENT AND NATURE OF ABSOLUTE POVERTY

This research will provide reliable scientific estimates of the extent and nature of absolute poverty in the world, based on the definition agreed to by the governments of 117 countries at the 1995 World Summit on Social Development and within the framework of International Human Rights conventions.The key research objectives are to:

• operationalise for adults the definition of absolute poverty agreed upon at the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen in 1995
• relate this operationalisation to the relevant parts of the international human rights framework as set out in various instruments to which the UK Government is a party
• construct a database of recent high quality household sample survey data which are sufficiently comprehensive to be representative of all the developing regions of the world and the ‘poorer’ developed countries (eg Mexico, Turkey)
• produce reliable and valid estimates on the extent and nature of absolute poverty in the world at household level, by household type and location (eg rural/urban)
• produce reliable and valid estimates on the extent and nature of absolute poverty in the world at individual level for adults, by gender and age group
• produce reliable and valid estimates on the extent and nature of absolute poverty in the world at individual level for children
• produce sub-regional analysis on the extent and nature of absolute poverty and, for larger countries (eg India, China, etc), sub-country level results (eg. by state/province)
• elucidate the intra country variation in poverty, particularly for countries which contain states/provinces with very large populations.