L’âge est-il un facteur explicatif de la pauvreté multidimensionnelle au Mali

Research on age as an explanatory factor of multidimensional poverty repeatedly highlights the difficulty of counting the poor population, especially of an elderly person. This difficulty lies both in the complexity of defining what an elderly person or a poor household is, and in the methodological choices that must be made during the actual estimation. As a result, the poverty rates of an elderly person are different depending on the definitions used (absolute or relative poverty) and the approaches chosen (monetary, subjective, by living conditions). The evolution of poverty rates resulting from these approaches is not the same (Chantal & Philippe, 1996). For several years, the poverty of an elderly person has been the subject of reflection for both the World Bank and UNICEF. At the initiative of international organizations, the problem of the poverty of an elderly person is returning to the center of research on economic and social development. Poverty is the scarcity of resources and goods (misery is expressed by deficiencies) and a recognition of inequalities based on social relations within a given society (World Bank & UNDP, 2000). In addition, a very old attitude is that the poor blame themselves for their situation. "Human poverty" is presented as the "absence of basic human capacities: illiteracy, malnutrition, reduced longevity, poor maternal health, preventable disease". Keyword: Elderly, Poverty