Nº 100 (Junio, 2010). Leonardo Gasparini, Walter Sosa Escudero, Mariana Marchionni y Sergio Olivieri.

This paper studies poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean from a multidimensional perspective, exploiting the Gallup World Poll, a survey that provides a unique opportunity to perform intercountry comparisons. A factor analysis suggests that welfare can be appropriately summarized by three dimensions: income, subjective welfare, and “basic needs”. Although in general poverty profiles are similar across dimensions, this paper highlights some differences that should be taken into account when characterizing the poor and designing social policies. Another finding is that the US$1 line appears to be a reasonable cut-off value to measure food deprivation.

Published in Journal of Economic Inequality. Volume 11, Issue 2 (2013), Page 195-214 (ISSN: 1569-1721).

A preliminary reduced versión was published in Graham y Lora (eds.). Paradox and perception. Measuring quality of Life in Latin America. The Brookings Institution.