How to Explain the Measurement of Multidimensional Poverty to the General Public: Workshop for Journalists in Colombia

Abstract

In 2011, Colombia made an important change to the way in which poverty is measured. Together with a review of the methodology to measure monetary poverty, the government introduced a new methodology for measuring poverty – the Multidimensional Poverty Index for Colombia (MPI-C). This new scenario generated an important challenge: how to explain the existence of two poverty figures (monetary and multidimensional) to people. DANE, the institution in charge of measuring and disclosing poverty figures using the two methodologies, addressed this challenge by training media editors and reporters at a workshop on multi dimensional poverty entitled ‘the unknown dimension’. Silvia Botello from DANE gives an overview of the workshop.