השוואת שיטות

	Foster-Greer-Thorbecke Index	Poverty Gap Index
תחום	כלכלה	כלכלה
משפחה	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
שנת המקור	1984	1984
הוגה השיטה	James Foster, Joel Greer & Erik Thorbecke	James Foster, Joel Greer & Erik Thorbecke (FGT alpha = 1)
סוג	Parametric class of poverty measures	Money-metric poverty depth measure
מקור מכונן	Foster, J., Greer, J., & Thorbecke, E. (1984). A class of decomposable poverty measures. Econometrica, 52(3), 761–766.	Foster, J., Greer, J., & Thorbecke, E. (1984). A class of decomposable poverty measures. Econometrica, 52(3), 761–766.
כינויים	FGT Index, FGT Poverty Measures, P-alpha Poverty Index, Foster-Greer-Thorbecke Poverty Measure	Poverty Gap Ratio, Income Gap Measure, Mean Normalized Shortfall, Depth of Poverty
קשורות	4	3
תקציר	The Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) index is a parametric class of poverty measures introduced by James Foster, Joel Greer, and Erik Thorbecke in 1984 that became the workhorse of applied poverty analysis. A single parameter alpha tunes how much weight the measure places on the depth and distribution of poverty: alpha = 0 gives the headcount ratio (the share of people below the poverty line), alpha = 1 gives the poverty gap (the average normalized shortfall), and alpha = 2 gives poverty severity (which weights larger shortfalls more heavily). Its defining virtue is additive decomposability — total poverty is the population-weighted sum of subgroup poverty — which makes it ideal for profiling poverty across regions, sectors, and demographic groups.	The poverty gap index is the member of the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke family at alpha = 1 and the standard money-metric measure of the depth of poverty. Where the headcount ratio merely counts who is poor, the poverty gap averages how far the poor fall below the poverty line, expressed as a fraction of that line and spread over the whole population. It can be read as the per-capita resource shortfall — the share of the poverty line, per person, that perfect targeting would need to transfer to eliminate poverty — making it the natural complement to the headcount when judging the cost and intensity of poverty.