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Notes
- 1.
More specifically, Morris (1979) focused on infant mortality, life expectancy, and adult literacy as the different aspects of the physical quality of life index (PQLI). Although only the first two of these are related to health, one can expect that both will be highly correlated with adult literacy.
- 2.
This does not prevent from using consumption as the basis of poverty measurement, however. In fact, most of the poverty lines used in developing countries almost exclusively focus on consumption as the basis of measurement not only because the monetary estimates are easy to elicit but, more importantly, accurately estimating incomes would be even more challenging (Pradhan and Ravallion 2000; Wagle 2007a).
- 3.
A poverty line or threshold specifies the amount of income (or wealth) needed to maintain a non-poor lifestyle (Gordon and Spicker 1999). It is used to identify the population in poverty for policy, administrative, and research purposes.
- 4.
Expressed in 1985 purchasing power parity (PPP) international dollars, this poverty line was developed as the mean of the official poverty lines of a group of low income developing countries (Ravallion et al. 1991). In 1993 international PPP dollars, the similar approach yielded the international poverty line of $1.08/day and yet is referred as the $1/day poverty line (Chen and Ravallion 2001).
- 5.
It incorporates the concept of subsistence living as it is developed originally by estimating the incomes needed to acquire the ‘basic’ basket of food items and by multiplying that income by three to include living and other expenses (Orshansky 1965).
- 6.
Here, the UNDP approach to defining poverty can be bit confusing; it includes food as basic minimum and yet shelter and clothing as non-food and perhaps ‘non-basic’ needs. Moreover, the non-food needs are referred to be within the purview of relative poverty as if a minimum standard of living does not include clothing, housing, and other amenities (UNDP 2000a). Yet, this is precisely how national poverty lines are developed in developing countries. See Wagle (2007a) for details.
- 7.
ILO has prepared a compendium of poverty lines in use in developing as well as industrial countries. Some countries have more than one poverty line in use. See Tabatabai (1996) for details.
- 8.
This is an imperfect example because, in setting the international poverty line, the UNDP has arbitrarily valued the consumption necessary in various societies, without taking cultural, geographic, or value aspects into consideration.
- 9.
Different forms of poverty, for example, include such concepts as cumulative poverty-combining monetary poverty, poor living conditions, and feeling of inability to deal with difficult conditions-and selective poverty-people who say they are not poor but are generally manifesting poor living conditions (Strobel 1996).
- 10.
The unprecedented global integration that has taken place causing massive structural changes to the economies in both developing and industrial countries clearly vindicates what Marx explained in the nineteenth century.
- 11.
See Wagle (2007a) for a survey of the official poverty lines in South Asia, including Nepal, employing the basic needs approach.
- 12.
The debates over the official poverty lines in the United States are quintessential. While there is a widely perceived inadequacy of the official poverty lines to capture the notion of basic needs in today's society (Citro and Michael 1995; Iceland 2003; Joassart-Marcelli 2005; Short 2001), the Census Bureau (2006), the agency officially responsible to updating poverty lines, uses experimental poverty lines that result in significantly lower poverty headcount ratios.
- 13.
According to Galbraith (1958:23-24), "People are poverty-stricken when their income, even if adequate for survival, falls markedly behind that of the community. Then they cannot have what the larger community regards as the minimum necessary for decency; and they cannot wholly escape, therefore, the judgment of the larger community that they are indecent. They are regarded for, in a literal sense, they live outside the grades or categories which the community regards as acceptable."
- 14.
While he broadens the concept of the overall quality of life as the basis for assessing one's poverty status, Townsend (1970:42) argues "…the possession by individuals and families of relatively low resources does not automatically mean they are in poverty, but only if they are thereby unable to have the types of diets, participate in the activities and have the living conditions and amenities which are customary in that society."
- 15.
The fight between Sen (1985c) and Townsend (1985) is quintessential of the tension between using the absolute and relative criteria.
- 16.
It is precisely for this reason that Sen (1976) viewed the ‘transfer axiom’ fundamental to driving the enterprise of accurately measuring poverty. The Sen index, it was argued, would be sensitive to those regressive transfers in the real world in which the poor often witness their income share being transferred to the non-poor.
- 17.
This is also consistent with the trend in Nepal for the past two decades (Wagle 2007a, 2007b).
- 18.
This is partly reflected in the distinction made by the UNDP (2000a) between extreme poverty and overall poverty. Because food needs tend to be more basic than housing or other needs, applying the absolute criterion of food need for extreme poverty is reasonable. The non-food needs incorporated in the overall poverty, on the other hand, are thought of as relative, partly shaped by their overall consumption in society. National poverty lines are also increasingly developed using these guidelines (Wagle 2007a).
- 19.
The overall human poverty incorporates longevity, knowledge, and income poverty in case of the advanced, OECD countries, where income poverty is defined as the income shortfall compared to the 50 percent of the median.
- 20.
Due to rising housing cost, studies have shown that families spend increasingly larger share of their after tax incomes on housing thus attenuating the part of the disposable income left for food and other necessities (Pelletiere et al. 2005). Based on this, there are even recommendations to set the poverty line at three times the housing cost.
- 21.
Increasing childcare, health care, and transportation costs, inter alia, put enormous pressure on today's family budgets in the United States with no possibility of coping with these costs for families just at or slightly above the official poverty line (Citro and Michael 1995; Joassart-Marcelli 2005).
- 22.
Measurement outcomes using these international poverty lines have not been particularly useful for national governments as their more specific, official poverty lines have produced very different poverty estimates. These estimates also provide dissimilar trends in poverty incidence over time (Wagle 2002, 2007a).
- 23.
In its Human Development Reports, for example, the UNDP (1999, 2005, 2006) uses both absolute money income (in case of developing countries) and income relative to the 50 percent of the median (in case of industrialized countries) to compute poverty indices. This recognizes the need to use both absolute and relative criteria and the difficulties in doing so.
- 24.
Sen (2000) argues, for example, that concept of social exclusion, which essentially deals with the freedom that one enjoys in society, serves as one important dimension of capability. It may also be a dimension of capability if viewed as the process aspect of freedom. Proponents of social exclusion argue, however, that what one can do and have is largely a function of the broader social dynamics with individual analyses serving as the different components of social exclusion.
- 25.
If we were to assume educational attainment truly represents the level of capability in the United States, for example, the positive progress in the educational attainment in its general population over the past few decades indicates that any capability poverty threshold would have to be increased. This change in the poverty threshold, however, would have to be consistent with the level of freedom that a particular level of education, say high school education, brings in terms of the choices in the labor market. Even more crucial would be to change such threshold in developing societies, as their populations have been able to achieve rapid educational advancements.
- 26.
More specifically, the list includes life expectancy; bodily health; bodily integrity for movement as well as other protections; practice and expansion of senses, imagination, and thought; expression of emotions and love; practical reason securing liberty of conscience and religious observance; affiliation or nondiscriminatory attachments with others; harmony with other species; playfulness; and control over political and material environment with protection of political, property, and professional rights (Nussbaum 2006:58-59).
- 27.
Clearly there are variations in the three expositions of basic reasons for action listed. But the elements listed above were central to all of such variations. See Alkire (2002) for the complete account of the review.
- 28.
This set of dimensions of well-being included material well-being, bodily well-being, social well-being, security, psychological well-being, and freedom of choice and action. See Alkire (2002) and also Narayan et al. (2000) for more through treatments.
- 29.
These include power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation, self-direction, universalism, benevolence, tradition, conformity and security. See Alkire (2002) and also Schwartz (1994) for developments in this direction.
- 30.
QOL domains include material well-being, health, productivity, intimacy/friendship, safety, community, and emotional well-being. See Alkire (2002) and Cummins (1996) for details.
- 31.
Others reviewed included basic human needs (Doyal and Gough 1993), world values (Inglehart 1997), prudential values for development (Qizilbash 1996), and human needs (Ramsay 1992) which tended to be more or less similar.
- 32.
See technical notes, for example, in UNDP (2005) for the latest methodological explanations.
- 33.
This was experimental because, for whatever reason, the UNDP appears to have discontinued this practice for its more recent human development reports.
- 34.
Elaborating on this, Gaventa (1998) states, "the unemployed may be organized to participate in strategies for overcoming unemployment or for job creation, youth organizations may be encouraged to participate on issues affecting youth, immigrants or minorities may develop participatory strategies for addressing racism or cultural exclusion, etc."
- 35.
Toye and Infanti (2004), for example, treat social exclusion a concept that embeds poverty and suggest that attempt to measure social exclusion ought to include a comprehensive list of indicators covering such a variety of aspects as cultural, economic, functional, participatory, physical, political, relational, and structural factors.
- 36.
Whether the instrumentally important factors such as unemployment can be used as the indicators of social exclusion is arguable, however, since they have broader implications for one's relationship with society. Yet, just like the distinction between capability and functioning, it is important to focus on instrumental factors that have some constitutive values. It is for this reason that the UNDP (1997, 1999) uses unemployment as the indicator of social exclusion.
- 37.
Specific indicators used to measure labor market exclusion included labor market participation and number of workers in households where as those of exclusion from basic services included utility disconnections, unaffordability or unavailability these services, and use of public versus private services. Similarly, the indicators of social relations included nonparticipation in common social activities, contact with family and friends, support from others in the community, participation in civic activities and organizations, and lack of movement in the community.
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Wagle, U. (2008). Three Related Concepts of Poverty. In: Multidimensional Poverty Measurement. Economic Studies in Inequality, Social Exclusion and Well-Being, vol 4. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-75875-6_2
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