Measuring inequality of poverty: theory and an application to India

The commonly used poverty indices measure the overall level of poverty in a society but fail to capture the differential intensity across different socioeconomic groups. This paper proposes a new measure, Inequality of Poverty Index (similar to dissimilarity index in the literature on inequality of opportunity) which captures inequality in distribution of poverty across different subgroups. It can be used to determine the major socioeconomic factors/characteristics/circumstances causing between-group disparity in poverty and effect of a specific factor on poverty relative to other factors and time. The paper also provides an application of the index and potential policy implications.