Measuring poverty so that the poorest are not left behind

Progress on the United Nations goals is often assessed using the widely known ‘headcount ratio’. This column argues that such an intuitive and popular measure is insufficient since different regions might face different realities in terms of deprivations within each indicator. This is demonstrated, for example, in the case of sanitation deprivation by the contrasting experiences of Dhaka and Rajshahi in Bangladesh. The authors propose new measures that can help to ensure that the poorest are not ‘left behind’.