Abstract:
The living standard of the least well-off members of society - industrialized or not - is of public policy and ethical interest. One way to examine differences between societies in this respect is to study the extent and severity of income poverty between countries and over time. While poverty can be thought of in many different ways, examining income poverty has a long tradition. This chapter (Draft of Chapter 10 in Handbook on Income Distribution, edited by A.B. Atkinson and F. Bourguignon. Preprint submitted to Elsevier Preprint 31 December 1998) reviews issues that arise in studying economic poverty in industrialized countries and examines evidence on their ranking according to poverty and its changes over time.
