Adjusting Monetary Measures of Poverty to Non-Monetary Aspects: An Analysis Based on Sri Lankan Data

This paper reassesses the status of poverty in Sri Lanka using a monetary measure which was adjusted for people's perceptions about the social climate. Data collected by the Sri Lanka Integrated Survey was used to obtain incidences of poverty using cost of basic need (CBN) poverty lines and poverty lines adjusted for people's perceptions. The results reveal that the poverty measurements significantly differ with the two approaches though poverty ranking remains more or less consistent.