Purpose: Most of the characterizations of inequality or poverty indices assume some invariance condition, be that scale, translation, or intermediate, which imposes value judgments on the measurement. In the unidimensional approach, Zheng (2007a, 2007b) suggests replacing all these properties...

In the unidimensional poverty field, a number of axioms capture the distribution sensitivity among the poor. One of them is the monotonicity sensitivity axiom that demands that a poverty measure should be more sensitive to a reduction in the income of a poor person, the poorer that person is. On...