Measuring poverty within and between population subgroups.

In this paper we propose a decomposition of the Foster, Greer, Thorbecke (FGT) class of poverty indexes into two additive components (namely, poverty within groups and poverty between groups) when both a community-wide threshold and a specific poverty line for each subgroup of population is used. The aim is to suggest an integrated perspective that takes into account both group-specific and overall living conditions, and allows us to throw light on the relative well-being conditions of specific subgroups of population as well as of the entire society. The paper is complemented with an empirical application of the suggested methodology based on the European Community Household Panel.