Paola Ballon is a development economist whose work asks how to measure what poverty takes from people: their capabilities, their agency, their access to water, food and services. She has measured multidimensional poverty in Sudan, South Sudan and Mali, modeled capabilities in Bolivia and women's empowerment and agency, and estimated the welfare costs of shocks and missing services in Latin America. She co-wrote Multidimensional Poverty Measurement and Analysis (Oxford University Press, 2015) at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative and, as a research fellow at UNU-WIDER, advised Mozambique's Ministry of Economics and Finance on poverty. Her work has appeared in The Lancet, PNAS, World Development, Global Environmental Change and the Journal of Development Studies. She holds a PhD in econometrics from the University of Geneva and is an associate editor of Oxford Development Studies and the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities.
Selected publications
Measuring opportunity and agency
- Ballon, P. (2023). Statistical issues in multidimensional poverty measurement: redundancy analysis. In J. Silber (Ed.), Research Handbook on Measuring Poverty and Deprivation, 463–474. Edward Elgar. DOI
- Ballon, P. (2018). A structural equation model of female empowerment. Journal of Development Studies, 54(8), 1303–1320. DOI
- Klein, E., & Ballon, P. (2018). Rethinking measures of psychological agency: a study on the urban fringe of Bamako. Journal of Development Studies, 54(8), 1284–1302. DOI
- Krishnakumar, J., & Ballon, P. (2008). Estimating basic capabilities: a structural equation model applied to Bolivia. World Development, 36(6), 992–1010. DOI
Poverty, inequality and the people averages hide
- Ballón, P., Cockburn, J., Dessy, S., & Diarra, S. (2018). Child monetary poverty and multidimensional deprivations: why they differ. Journal of African Economies, 27(4), 483–512. Link
- Ballon, P., & Duclos, J.-Y. (2016). A comparative analysis of multidimensional poverty in Sudan and South Sudan. African Development Review, 28(S2), 132–161. DOI
- Alkire, S., Foster, J., Seth, S., Santos, M. E., Roche, J. M., & Ballon, P. (2015). Multidimensional Poverty Measurement and Analysis. Oxford University Press.
Work, services and the economics of opportunity
- Hope, R., & Ballon, P. (2021). Individual choices and universal rights for drinking water in rural Africa. PNAS, 118(40), e2105953118. DOI
- Ballon, P., & Dávalos, J. (2020). Inequality and the changing nature of work in Peru. UNU-WIDER Working Paper 2020/168. Link
- Jones, L., & Ballon, P. (2020). Tracking changes in resilience and recovery after natural hazards: insights from a high-frequency mobile-phone panel survey. Global Environmental Change. DOI
- Hope, R., & Ballon, P. (2019). Global water policy and local payment choices in rural Africa. npj Clean Water. DOI
- Springmann, M., Mason-D'Croz, D., Robinson, S., Garnett, T., Godfray, H. C. J., Gollin, D., Rayner, M., Ballon, P., & Scarborough, P. (2016). Global and regional health effects of future food production under climate change: a modelling study. The Lancet, 387(10031), 1937–1946. DOI
- Ballon, P., Mejía-Mantilla, C., Olivieri, S., Lara Ibarra, G., & Romero, J. (2021). The Welfare Costs of Being Off the Grid; The Costs of Staying Healthy. World Bank. Link
Gender, households and agency
- Ballon, P., & Yalonetzky, G. (2018). Introduction to special section: quantitative approaches to the measurement and analysis of female empowerment and agency. Journal of Development Studies, 54(8), 1279–1283. DOI