Poverty Level of Households: A Multidimensional Approach Based on Fuzzy Mathematics

In recent years, extensive research jobs have been developed on the definition, measurement and analyzing of poverty. Poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon, thus a number of challenges appears measuring it. The fuzzy set theoretic approach has been used to measure the poverty and to classify the difference between poor and non-poor households. This paper aims at proposing a new methodology to measure the poverty index in fuzzy environment via a two-step membership function. The concept of one poverty line is chalked out first and then a general method is developed to split the poverty index. Linguistic variables are used for the attributes to find the membership values of the households against the attributes and to grade the attributes. The effectiveness and usefulness of the proposed method is numerically illustrated through a case study for rural household people living in remote rural areas of India.