Approaches to the measurement of poverty in EU

This thesis focuses on current approaches to the measurement of poverty. The aim of the thesis is to evaluate if measuring poverty indicators and quality of life indicators used by United Nations Development Programme and Eurostat are meaningful enough. The theoretical part is an analysis of chosen indicators. The theoretical knowledge is followed by practical part, comparing poverty levels in member states of the European Union, and giving deeper insight into the analysis of sub-indicators. Furthermore, the thesis looks at informative value connected to mutual relations among the indicators. The comparison reveals that the level of human development is negatively related to aspects such as insufficient economic growth, inequality and low level of wealth redistribution. From an analytical point of view, new multi-criteria indicators are useful enough for the purpose of research on this topic, in spite of certain imperfections