Multidimensional poverty in urban Brazil: income, assets and expenses

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present deprivation in urban Brazil in a multidimensional perspective with dimensions related to household’s objective information, assets in the household, subjective evaluation concerning the dwelling and expenses.

Design/methodology/approach

The author used factorial analysis applied to the Brazilian Household Budget Survey. Most dimensions showed a positive correlation with income, while for others it was not observed any significant difference between income ranges. Some types of deprivation specially touched low-income households, while other dimensions differentiated middle-income households, or even higher income households. The author applied a fuzzy perspective to define deprivation membership in each dimension with the use of a modified logistic function. The author observed that households with similar income faced different levels of deprivation in many dimensions.

Findings

The author showed that there were significant differences in household’s expense preferences and profiles linked to these findings. Households with high levels of food deprivation relatively spend more on household’s rent, taxes and services, indicating that shelter and then food in the household are the very basic goods. Larger relative expenses with food in the household indicated higher levels of deprivation in all other dimensions, indicating that due to these higher food expenditures, the households could not overcome the deprivation in other dimensions. Households that spend more on smoke and gambling faced higher deprivation in most dimensions, suggesting different expenses priorities, less household oriented.

Originality/value

To the best of the knowledge, this is the first attempt to link multidimensional deprivation and expenses profile for Brazilian data.

Citation

Golgher, A. (2015), "Multidimensional poverty in urban Brazil: income, assets and expenses", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 43 No. 1, pp. 19-38. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSE-06-2013-0140