Using Ordinal Variables to Measure Multidimensional Poverty in Two South Mediterranean Countries

The main goal of this paper is to highlight the empirical contribution of methodological refinements to "counting approach" poverty measures, and to use ordinal variables as a means of understanding multidimensional poverty in two South Mediterranean countries, namely Egypt and Jordan. The paper relies on the general framework proposed by Silber and Yalonetsky (2013) to compare multidimensional poverty measures, such as the measure based on the Alkire and Foster approach (2011) and applied by UNDP in the construction of the MPI, and others that are sensitive to the distribution of deprivation counts for individuals, such as the family of poverty measures introduced by Chakravarty and D’Ambrosio (2006) and Rippin (2010), and those based on the extension of the Aaberge and Peluso approach as suggested by Silber and Yalonetzky (2013). The findings we obtained make it possible to highlight the complementarities between the various poverty measures. These complementarities prove to be particularly useful for analyzing poverty trends per country and also per area of residence.