This project focussed on a problem that has rarely been addressed: the fact that the
borderline between the poor and non-poor is imprecise. An exact borderline is assumed in
almost all analysis and measures of income poverty (involving the standard headcount
indices, income gaps, the “Sen index” etc.) as well as the United Nations Development
Programme’s human poverty index. The only work that attempts to deal with this
problem uses fuzzy set theory to develop measures of poverty. Unfortunately, these
measures have lacked much intuitive appeal. Furthermore, work on these measures has
been limited because it only focuses on one aspect of vagueness - vagueness about the
line below which someone is poor - “vertical vagueness”. It has failed to address
vagueness about the dimensions of poverty - which we term “horizontal vagueness”.
At the outset the main objectives of the project were: (1) to develop a framework
which could address both vertical and horizontal vagueness; (2) to use it to develop
measures of poverty and vulnerability; and (3) to use the framework to analyse core
poverty and vulnerability in South Africa. We took the view that to apply any such
framework adequately we had to engage directly with communities which are thought to
be amongst the poorest in South Africa. A large part of the project was, thus, to be
devoted to trying to understand how South Africans themselves view the essential things
in life. This information was to be analysed and used to implement the framework, with a
view to informing, and contributing to, policy debates.