Measuring multidimensional deprivation

This paper examines the problem of measuring deprivation in an economy with more than one attribute. The income-based methods falls short in situations where for some attribute market do not exist. In this case, we explore suitable methods of measuring commodity specific and aggregate personal deprivation directly based on the distribution of attributes. This paper also characterizes simple class of deprivation measures for different possible situations. These measures would be helpful in practice, as they are simply parametrized. We also define deprivation orderings, both commodity specific and aggregate. Finally we provide a numerical illustration of our measures and orderings. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.