ESCAP defines poverty as having three inter-related and inter-locking aspects: (a) lack of regular income, employment opportunities and purchasing power, (b) lack of access to services (such as health, education and water) and (c) lack of political power, participation, dignity and respect. A multi-dimensional definition of poverty, whereby all deprivations are inter woven, may make it, however, more difficult to objectively and quantifiably measure people’s poverty.

Current approaches to measuring poverty such as the 1$ a day measure fail to capture the multi-dimensional nature of poverty. Current approaches are further problematic for measuring urban poverty, because poverty has traditionally been considered a rural problem rather than an urban problem and, as such, measurement tools have been based on rural poverty.

With the majority of the population in this region expected to be living in urban areas by 2025 and many of those urban residents being poor it is important to monitor the trends in order to take policy measures to avoid an ‘urbanization of poverty’. New ways of measuring urban poverty must be devised to enable policy makers and researchers to better understand urban poverty.

This two-day seminar will be structured around a series of discussion sessions on the following:

• definition of poverty
• what is specifically urban about urban poverty
• data available for measuring urban poverty in Cambodia, Philippines, India, Indonesia and Thailand
• whether standard methods must simply be improved or whether they should be replaced.

The structure of the seminar is remaining deliberately loose as ESCAP wants to hear from the participants involved their views and opinions on whether urban poverty is different to rural poverty and why and how.