This paper makes a systematic comparison of four approaches to multidimensional poverty analysis based respectively on the theory of fuzzy sets, information theory, efficiency analysis and axiomatic derivations of poverty indices. The database was the 1995 Israeli Census that provided information on the ownership of various durable goods. There appears to be a fair degree of agreement between the various multidimensional poverty indices concerning the identification of the poor households. The four approaches have also shown that poverty decreases with the schooling level of the head of the household, first decreases and then increases with his/her age and with the size of the household. Poverty is higher when the head of the household is single and lower when he/she is married, lowest when the head of the household is Jewish and highest when he/she is Muslim. Poverty is also higher among households whose head immigrated in recent years, does not work or lives in Jerusalem. These observations were made on the basis of logit regressions. This impact on poverty of many of the variables is not very different from the one that is observed when poverty measurement is based only on the income or the total expenditures of the households. Copyright 2005 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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To understand the process described by the Kuznets curve a decomposition of the Gini Index by income sources is used that emphasizes the role of three components measuring the impact of the shares of the sources, the degree to which they are unequally distributed and their correlation with total income. The rising section of the Kuznets curve is mainly the consequence of the increasing share of wages while the declining section is related to the declining share of entrepreneurial income and the negative correlation between transfers and total income. The data sources were provided by the International Labour Office.

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