ABSTRACT
This chapter follows a double objective in discussing methodological puzzles and pitfalls in poverty research. It presents a discussion of the validity of poverty research and discusses alternative methods of measurement. One of the major puzzles in poverty research is that income poverty and the receipt of social assistance coincide to a surprisingly small degree. The measurement of poverty is fundamentally dependent of the choice of the basic indicator of the standard of living of an individual or household. Poverty rates vary with equivalence scales, but the direction of the bias is indeterminate, depending on the distribution of poverty risks among the population. Comparative poverty research largely uses low income as the main concept of poverty, since it is relatively easy to measure and to compare across countries. The comparison of absolute and relative poverty rates does not produce a consistent picture of income poverty in advanced welfare states.
