Health Poverty

Poverty is typically measured with respect to some measure of individual or household resources, such as income or expenditure. However, there is no formal reason why poverty can not also be measured with respect to other important dimensions of the human condition, such as health or education. Here we review the analysis of health poverty. We predominantly focus on research which has appeared in the economics or health economics literature, and so much of our review will concentrate on the degree to which the methodology of poverty analysis as it stands for income poverty can also be applied in a health setting. We will see that this depends greatly upon the nature of the data available to the analyst, and in many cases the nature of health data will limit the range of poverty measures available.