The Use of Multidimensional Poverty to Proxy Chronic Poverty: An Application to Brazil

Abstract

When implementing social programs, governments are seeking ways of targeting individuals who are chronically deprived. Most developing countries lack panel data required to identify the chronically poor with standard chronic poverty measurements. This paper explores the use of multidimensional poverty as a proxy for chronic poverty. We present and analyze a multidimensional poverty measurement for Brazil. We then validate this approach by showing that our measure can significantly improve targeting of the chronically poor compared to standard static proxies.