Baland, Jean-MarieCassan, GuilhemDecerf, Benoit2022-08-012022-08-012022-07https://hdl.handle.net/10986/37790Poverty measures typically do not account for mortality, resulting in counter-intuitive evaluations. The reason is that they (i) suffer from a mortality paradox and (ii) do not attribute intrinsic value to the lifespan. The paper proposes the first poverty index that always attributes a positive value to lifespan and does not suffer from the mortality paradox. This index, called the poverty-adjusted life expectancy, follows an expected lifecycle utility approach a la Harsanyi and is based on a single normative parameter that transparently captures the trade-off between poverty and mortality. This indicator can be straightforwardly generalized to account for unequal lifespans. Empirically, we show that accounting for mortality substantially changes cross-country comparisons and trends. The paper also quantifies the fraction of these comparisons that are robust to the choice of the normative parameter.enCC BY 3.0 IGOWELL-BEING INDEXHUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEXMULTIDIMENSIONAL POVERTYPOVERTYMORTALITYPOVERTY-ADJUSTED LIFE EXPECTANCY INDEXCOUNTRY COMPARISONWorking PaperWorld Bank10.1596/1813-9450-10133