Abstract
Based on an analysis of microeconomic — household surveys of 1996-1997 and 2001-2002 — and macroeconomic, the present study poverty in Mauritius. The profiles of poverty in monetary terms enable to apprehend the configuration of social states according to the various socio-economic groups, their localization in space and the relationship with the gender. Next, the econometric modelling of the determinants of poverty allows us to explain poverty according to segments of the labour market. The measures of the monetary poverty underlie a too narrow design of the well-being. For this reason, the credibility of an analysis of the social states requires a multiple-indicator approach. Accordingly, one shows the appropriateness and the complementary of an analysis of human poverty underlining the serious shortages in terms of capacity of choice — compared to illiteracy and the living conditions. The last part of this research is to study the evolution of poverty using two approaches. First, we used the concept developed by Chaudhurri (2002, 2003) and other economists, like Bourguignon, Goh, Kim, Jalan, Ravallion, Sumarto and Suryahadi to measure the vulnerability to poverty, the ex ante risk that a household is poor ex post, if it is not poor, or that he remains poor, if it is already poor. Second, we use the Markov model to distinguish chronic poverty from transient poverty.