Acta Universitatis Danubius. Œconomica, Vol 13, No 4 (2017)

Abstract

Every poverty index can be classified into one of the two major classes; classical indices and fuzzy indices; except for the semi-fuzzy poverty indices such as PGf and MIf which hybridize between the theory of classical sets and that of fuzzy sets, which makes their axiomatic analysis very special since it uses both classical and fuzzy mathematical tools. In order to better exploit and characterize the PGf and MIf indices, we propose in this paper an axiomatic analysis by mathematically demonstrating, on the one hand, the satisfaction of these two indices of a set of axioms most desirable by economists, which shows their performance in describing poverty. On the other hand, we discuss their limits according to three axioms that we demonstrate in order to improve the formula of these semi-fuzzy indices of poverty.