Measuring poverty within and between in population subgroups

In this paper we propose a decomposition of the Foster, Greer, Thorbecke (FGT) class of poverty indexes into two additive components (namely, pov-erty 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 ac-count both poverty within a specific subgroup of population as well as poverty between different subgroups. This allow us to throw light on the relative well-being conditions of specific subgroups of population as well as of the entire society. The paper also includes an empirical application of the suggested methodology based on the European Community House-hold Panel