Understanding and Combating Poverty: A Quest for Conceptualization, Measurment Indicators, Causes, and Empirical Methodologies

This paper reviews some selected conceptual literature on poverty issues and the various approaches to its definition, measurement, underlying causes, and empirical research methodologies used. The paper is divided into five sections of which the first, second, and third deal with approaches to the definition and measurement of poverty and implications on poverty reduction. While poverty definition and measurement have received sufficient research and discussion, the underlying causes of poverty have been rather under-researched. The fourth section reviews some of the literature on the causes of poverty including issues of economic growth and inequality. The fifth section is devoted to empirical methodologies adopted in poverty research and poverty assessment including advantages and disadvantages of both quantitative and qualitative approaches to poverty research. The paper winds up by concluding remarks after reviewing the literature on poverty.