This study compares monetary and multidimensional poverty measures for the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Using household data of 2007/2008, we compare the empirical outcomes of the country’s current official monetary poverty measure with those of a multidimensional poverty measure. We analyze which population subgroups are identified as poor by both measures and thus belong to the category of the poorest of the poor; and we look at which subgroups are identified as poor by only one of the measures and belong either to the category of the income-poor (identified as poor only by the monetary measure) or to that of the overlooked poor (identified as poor only by the multidimensional poverty measure). Furthermore, we examined drivers of these differences using a multinomial regression model and found that monetary poverty does not capture the multiple deprivations of ethnic minorities, who are only identified as poor when using a multidimensional poverty measure. We conclude that complementing the monetary poverty measure with a multidimensional poverty index would enable more effective targeting of poverty reduction efforts.

中文翻译：

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老挝人民民主共和国货币贫困和多维贫困之间的差异：对减贫政策和干预目标的影响

本研究比较了老挝人民民主共和国的货币和多维贫困措施。我们使用 2007/2008 年的家庭数据，比较了该国当前官方货币贫困衡量指标与多维贫困衡量指标的实证结果。我们分析了通过这两种方法都将哪些人口分组确定为贫困人口，从而属于贫困人口中最贫困的类别；我们看看哪些子组仅通过一种衡量标准被确定为贫困，并且属于收入贫困（仅通过货币衡量确定为贫困）或被忽视的贫困类别（仅通过货币衡量确定为贫困）多维贫困测度）。此外，我们使用多项回归模型检查了这些差异的驱动因素，发现货币贫困并没有反映少数民族的多重剥夺，他们只有在使用多维贫困衡量标准时才被确定为贫困。我们得出的结论是，用多维贫困指数补充货币贫困衡量标准将能够更有效地瞄准减贫工作。