the way in which the poverty gap index is calculated takes into account the difference between the mean income of the poor sector of the population and the poverty line weighted by the percentage of poor people while the poverty gap squared also takes into consideration the way in which income is distributed among the poor this indicates that in addition to the decrease in the poverty rate in those countries there was also a further improvement in the poverty gap and in income distribution among the poor the discrepancy is due basically to the fact that the price deflator used by tire institute to adjust the indigence line which reflects the variation in the prices of the specific products that make up the basic consumption basket rose less than the deflator used by eclac which reflects changes in food inflation and is therefore composed differently the discrepancy is due to minor methodological differences related to the calculation of aggregate income and the value of the lines used the dominican republic was the only countries in which the supplementary indicators pointed to a divergence from the trend in the poverty rate but this is not surprising given how small the changes were see box and figure