ABSTRACT
Poverty research in recent years has shown that poverty can be considered in multiple dimensions and there are degrees of poverty in every dimension. In Pouw (2008) it was further shown that poor households tend to accumulate welfare attributes in a particular dominant order. If dominant sequencing patterns can be discerned, this would provide us with useful insights into the dynamics of poverty and the kind of livelihood strategies adopted. The combination of both notions can lead to a number of useful insights into the kind of assets and foods consumed prioritized by the poor; i.e., distinguish what are relative ‘basics’ and ‘luxuries’ within a given context. By looking at what people have or lack, a more direct approach to poverty can be taken, which can be easily applied in settings where statistical capacity and resources to monitor poverty are few. This is the case in Uganda, where both the money-metric approach and more participatory approaches have been applied to map and monitor poverty trends over time (e.g., Appleton 2001; GoU 2001). The approach pursued in Pouw (2008) integrates qualitative and quantitative poverty research as an input into the development of an instrument to characterize and monitor poverty in a more cost-effective manner.
