The six studies in this special journal issue take an intertemporal perspective on poverty measurement. They were first presented at the UNU-WIDER conference on ‘Frontiers of Poverty Analysis’, in September 2008 in Helsinki, and have since been extensively revised and polished following feedback from the audience and academic peer review.

It is clear that a more complete understanding of poverty requires much more attention to the time dimension. As the studies illustrate, it is also clear that many theoretical and practical questions remain unresolved in measuring poverty over time, offering many fascinating opportunities for further investigation.