WHAT IS poverty and when is a person poor? Most would agree that poverty involves not having enough of certain things, or doing without others that richer people take for granted. But what is “enough”, which goods and services really matter, and who should decide these questions—researchers, governments or international agencies—are less tractable issues. Perhaps the poor themselves should have the final word. But this presents its own problems. Tabitha, a 44-year-old woman from a slum outside Nairobi, told researchers from Oxford University that going without meals was “normal for us”. Diminished expectations are only one of the effects of dire poverty.
贫困的定义是什么，一个人什么时候算是穷人？大多数人都认同贫困就是没有足够的某样东西，或者是没有富人理所应当享有的一切。但是“足够”是什么程度，什么商品和服务真正重要，而又由谁来决定这些问题--研究人员，政府们还是国际性机构--这些都是很难应对的问题。也许穷人自己会有最终的定论。但是这样做还会出现新问题。一位44岁来自内罗毕外贫民窟的妇女Tabitha告诉牛津大学的研究人员：吃不上饭对他们来说已经“习以为常”了。期望值降低仅仅是极度贫困的诸多影响之一。

In the world of international development, most have rallied around the “dollar-a-day” poverty line (or more precisely, the $1.25-a-day measure) and its less acute cousin, $2-a-day poverty. These World Bank measures judge a person to be poor if his income falls short of a given level, adjusted for differences in purchasing power. In principle poverty rates based on these measures count the fraction of people in a country who lack the resources to buy a notional, basic basket of goods.
在国际化发展的今天，大部分人还只是处于“每天一美金”的贫困线的生活水平（更准确的说应该是每天1.25美金）以及稍微宽松点的“每天2美金”的贫困线生活水平上。这些世界银行的衡量标准判定一个人的收入如果低于给定标准就属于穷人阶层，这个给定的标准会根据每个国家购买力的不同而做出相应的调整。一般来说，基于这些标准的贫困率表示了一个国家缺少财力购买规定的基本一揽子商品的人所占比重。

Despite the many merits of the $1-a-day measure—not least its simplicity—some argue that looking only at income risks impoverishing the debate about poverty. Such complaints can be overdone. Income clearly matters: it determines how much people can buy and therefore whether they can afford to do the things, like eat enough, that critics of income-based measures think are more important. But rising incomes do not always translate into better health, say, or better nutrition. So there is clearly scope for measures of poverty that directly capture the many different ways in which, to quote Amartya Sen, “human lives are battered and diminished”.
尽管每天1美金的衡量标准有诸多优点--尤其简单明了--但是一些人认为只看重收入会使对贫困的争论变得狭隘。这样的抱怨有点夸张。很明显收入是很重要的：收入决定了一个人可以买多少东西，因此决定了他们是否能够负担得起一些事物，比如能否吃饱，而收入衡量法的批评者们认为这些更重要。然而收入的增加不代表更健康或者说有更多营养。所以很明显存在一种贫困的衡量方法能够直接衡量如Amartya Sen所说的“人类的生活越来越糟”（贫困）的诸多不同方面。

A new set of internationally comparable data put together by researchers at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative at the University of Oxford tries to take Mr Sen’s ideas about “the need for a multidimensional view of poverty and deprivation” seriously*. Aided by the improved availability of survey data about living conditions for households in over 100 developing countries, the researchers have come up with a new index, called the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) will use in its next “Human Development Report” in October.
牛津大学的牛津贫困和人类发展中心的研究人员收集了一组在国际上具有可比性的数据，试图将Sen先生关于“贫困和剥削的多维观点”的想法付之实际。由于100个发展中国家居住者的生活条件监测数据的真实可靠性得到提高，研究人员得出了一个新的指数--多维贫困指数。联合国发展计划署将在10月份的“人类发展报告“中用到该指数。

The index seeks to build up a picture of the prevalence of poverty based on the fraction of households who lack certain basic things. Some of these are material. Does a family home have a dirt or dung floor? Does it lack a decent toilet? Must members of the household travel more than 30 minutes on foot to get clean water to drink? Do they live without electricity? Others relate to education, such as whether any school-age children are not enrolled or whether nobody in the family has finished primary school. Still others concern health, such as whether any member of a household is malnourished. A household is counted as poor if it is deprived on over 30% of the ten indicators used. Researchers can then calculate the percentage of people in each country who are “multidimensionally poor”.
该指数试图建起一幅画面--基于缺少某样基本物质的居住者比重的贫困普遍程度的画面。其中一些数据是物质性的。一个家庭的房子是否有肮脏的铺满动物粪便的地板？是否缺少一个像样的厕所？家庭成员是否必须步行超过30分钟才能取到干净的水喝？是否已经用上电？其他的一些数据是与教育相关的，诸如是否有学龄儿童辍学在家或者是否家中无人读完小学
。还有一些数据是关于健康的，诸如家庭成员中是否有人营养不良。如果一户人在10个指示指标中有超过3个的话那么就算做穷人。然后研究人员就可以计算每个国家中的”多维贫困“人数比例。

Looking at many aspects of poverty at once has several benefits. One problem with considering just one indicator is that some deprivations may be a matter of choice. As Mr Sen has argued in his work on poverty, what matters is not whether a person eats “enough” but whether he eats whatever he does out of choice. Fasting is fine; involuntary starvation is not. Some, for instance, may prefer the earthiness of a mud floor to the coldness of a concrete one. But the number of people choosing to be malnourished, illiterate, lacking in basic possessions and drinkers of dirty water all at once is probably fleetingly small. A person deprived along many of these dimensions surely counts as poor.
同时兼顾贫困的诸多方面有些好处。只考虑一个指示指标的问题是--一些贫困可能是自己的选择。正如Sen先生在自己的贫困著作中说的，一个人能否吃“饱”不重要，重要的是他是否没有选择的吃。禁食不要紧，非自愿挨饿可不行。例如，与水泥石的冰冷相比一些人可能更喜欢泥层的土质。但是选择成为营养不良、文盲、没有基本财产和引用脏水的人的数量正在急速减少。一个人如果占了这些标准的许多项，那他无疑是一个穷人。

Measure for measure
标准的标准

By and large, as the chart shows, countries’ poverty rates as calculated using the MPI differ quite a lot from those based on their $1-a-day rates. In India, for instance, many more people lack basic things, as measured using the MPI, than earn less than $1.25 a day. The opposite, however, is true of Tanzania, which is doing better at getting its people fed, housed and educated than its income-based poverty rate would suggest.
如图所示，总的来说，用MPI计算出来的国家贫困率与基于每天1美金这样的方法计算出来的贫困率相差甚远。例如，在印度，由MPI测算出来的缺少物质的人数远多于每天收入少于1.25美金的人数。但是，坦桑尼亚却属于相反的情况，与其基于收入测算出来的贫困率所显示的相比，坦桑尼亚在使人民温饱、居住和教育方面做得其实更好些。

Since the MPI is calculated by adding lots of different things up, it is possible to work backwards and see what contributes the most to poverty in specific places. In sub-Saharan Africa, the material measures contribute much more to poverty than in South Asia, where the biggest contributor is malnutrition. The authors argue that having this information readily accessible makes it easier for development agencies and governments to decide what to focus on. The MPI also does a better job of uncovering long-term trends. Successful reforms in health or education increase earnings only many years into the future but will show up quickly in the MPI poverty rate.
由于MPI是附加了很多不一样的东西在一起计算得出的，它有可能会逆向工作并且显示出在一些特别的地方什么是产生贫困的主要因素。物质匮乏在撒哈拉沙漠以南的非洲比南亚更是贫困的主要因素，而在南亚，最大的因素则是营养不良。作者认为这类信息的轻易取得使得发展机构和政府更容易决定将精力集中在哪。MPI还对揭示长期趋势有很好的作用。医疗和教育的成功改革只能在许多年以后才会增加居民收入，但是可以很快便在MPI贫困指数中显现出来。

Much remains to be done to refine the idea.For a start,the things the MPI measures are not particularly useful for middle-income countries, which have figured out how to get their people clean water and enough food but where other kinds of poverty still exist. But the principles on which the MPI is based are simple and easily adapted. An index for areas within a single country could draw on more data and could paint an even more nuanced picture: the Mexican government is already using a variant of the index to help monitor the results of its anti-poverty programmes. Measuring poverty is not the same as alleviating it, of course. But the MPI is a step forward.
完善该思想还有很多事情需要做。首先,MPI所衡量的事物对于中产阶级国家来说不是特别适用，这些国家已经有了干净的水以及充足的食物，但是其他形式的贫困依然存在。然而MPI基于的理论是十分简单适用的。一个单一国家不同地区的指数需要有更多的数据并且能够描绘出更细微的图画：墨西哥政府已经开始用该指数的变体来帮助审视其抗贫困项目的成效。当然，衡量贫困和减轻贫困是截然不同的。但是MPI仍然是一大进步。




* “Acute Multidimensional Poverty: A New Index for Developing Countries”, by Sabina Alkire and Emma Maria Santos. OPHI Working Paper 38, July 2010
“深刻多维贫困：发展中国家适用的新指数”，由Sabina Alkire和Emma Maria Santos创。OPHI工作论文38,2010年7月。

Finance and Economics