In recent years, in much of the World Bank's operational work as well as in applied research, consumption aggregates constructed from survey data have been used to measure poverty, to analyse changes in living standards, over time, and to assess the distributional impacts of various programs and...

This paper is concerned with the measurement of the relative poverty of people in different age groups in developing countries. In many instances it is useful to know, for example, whether a higher fraction of children are in poverty than are adults. However, it is difficult to make even simple...

Part I of this chapter briefly reviews the arguments for using consumption rather than income as a measure of living standards and for using it to measure poverty and inequality. It goes on to discuss the principal uses to which consumption data have been put; while the docu-mentation of living...

The World Bank prepares and publishes estimates of the number of poor people in the world. While everyone knows that these numbers should be taken with a pinch of salt, the numbers are arguably important. This paper discusses a number of problems with the current $1-a-day poverty counts, makes...

I explore the connection between income inequality and health in both poor and rich countries. I discuss a range of mechanisms, including nonlinear income effects, credit restrictions, nutritional traps, public goods provision, and relative deprivation. I review the evidence on the effects of...