Poverty in behavioral research: Different operationalizations, different results

Poverty is a complex phenomenon involving objective as well as subjective aspects. In reality, 9 out of 10 flagship studies from social sciences assess only objective indicators reducing poverty's multidimensional nature into solely economic characteristics. Comparing the effects of several distinct poverty operationalizations on the same outcome variable, we found substantial heterogeneity in the estimates. Neglecting the fact that different poverty operationalizations produce different results can generate misleading narratives when interpreting the findings. A researcher should be well-aware which poverty operationalization is the most suitable for their research purposes prior to the data collection. In case this is hard to determine, we aim to encourage researchers to perform sensitivity analyses based on different poverty operationalizations in order to inspect how these choices shape their outcomes.