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There is a growing interest on dynamic and broader concepts of deprivation such as vulnerability, which takes in to account the destitution of individuals from future shocks. We use the framework of decision making under uncertainty to arrive at a new measure of vulnerability to poverty. We highlight the importance of current standard of living to better capture the notion of vulnerability. In conceptualizing the new class of measures of vulnerability we thus move beyond the standard expected poverty measures that is commonly found in the literature. We also axiomatically characterize the new class of measure and discuss some of it's properties.

In this paper we explore what impact, if any, government debts have on achieving the Millennium Development Goals for the Indian states. To fulfill the goals, national governments, especially in the developing world, have to undertake major investments in the social sector; but how much they will really be able to do so will depend on the conditions of their finances. For the Indian states we find that government investment in the social sector is extremely important to reduce poverty, but the government's debt burden is actually stopping several states from attaining the MDG targets. Although, in the medium term the impact of the debt on poverty is not very harmful, in the longer run it has a significant negative impact. Therefore for policy purposes reduction in debt should be given a priority.