Normative Motivation

One key motivation for measuring multidimensional poverty is ethical, and that is to improve the fit between the measure and the phenomenon it is supposed to approximate. Poverty measures, to merit the name, must reflect the multifaceted nature of poverty itself.

Conceptually, many frameworks for multidimensional poverty have been advanced, from Ubuntu (Metz and Gaie 2010) to human rights (CONEVAL 2010), livelihoods (Bowley and Burnett-Hurst 1915) to social inclusion (Atkinson and Marlier 2010), Buen Vivir (Hidalgo-Capitan et al. 2014) to basic needs (Hicks and Streeten 1979; Stewart 1985), from the Catholic social teaching (Curran 2002) to social protection (UNRISD 2010; Barrientos 2013) to capabilities (Sen 1993; Wolff and De-Shalit 2007), among others. If poverty is understood to be a shortfall from well-being, then it cannot be conceptualized or measured in isolation from some concept of well-being.^[4] This is not to say that a fully specified concept of welfare is required to measure poverty, only that these endeavours are inherently connected. Box 1.1 explores options for linking these two concepts.

BOX 1.1 POVERTY, WELFARE, AND POLICY

BOX 1.1 (cont.)

considers properties of measures alongside their accuracy, ease of understanding, and policy salience—and understand such a wider set of considerations to be consistent with Sen's capability approach which we discuss subsequently.^[5]

Multiple concepts of poverty will continue to be used to inform multidimensional poverty design.^[6] The remainder of this section as well as parts of Chapter 6 illustrate how such concepts inform measurement, by drawing upon one particular approach: Amartya Sen's capability approach.

Sen argues that well-being should be defined and assessed in terms of the functionings and capabilities people enjoy. Functionings are beings and doings that people value and have reason to value, and capabilities represent ‘the various combinations of functionings... that the person can achieve' (Sen 1992: 40). In The Idea of Justice, Sen describes them thus: ‘The various attainments in human functioning that we may value are very diverse, varying from being well nourished or avoiding premature mortality to taking part in the life of the community and developing the skill to pursue one's work-related plans and ambitions. The capability that we are concerned with is our ability to achieve various combinations of functionings that we can compare and judge against each other in terms of what we have reason to value' (Sen 2009: 233).

Assessing progress in terms of valuable freedoms and capabilities has implications for measurement. All multidimensional measures need to define the focal space of measurement. Whereas economics assessed well-being in the space of utility, or resources, the capability perspective—in line with human rights approaches—defines and in some cases measures well-being in capability space. Capabilities are defined to have intrinsic value as well as instrumental value—to be ends rather than merely means. Hence, the capability approach ‘proposes a serious departure from concentrating on the means of living to the actual opportunities of living' (Sen 2009: 233).

Moving now to poverty, Sen argues that poverty should be seen as capability deprivation (Sen 1992, 1997, 1999, 2009—Box 1.2 presents a succinct overview of related con­siderations). Defining poverty in the space of capabilities (as Sen does) has multiple implications for measurement. The first is multidimensionality: ‘the capability approach is concerned with a plurality of different features of our lives and concerns' (2009: 233).

This plurality applies also to poverty measurement: ‘The need for a multidimensional view of poverty and deprivation guides the search for an adequate indicator of human poverty' (Anand and Sen 1997).

BOX 1.2 CAPABILITIES, RESOURCES, AND UTILITY

Sen's capability approach comprises opportunity freedoms, evaluated in the space of capabilities and functionings, as defined just above, and process freedoms, ranging from individual agency to democratic and systemic freedoms. This box reviews the value-added of capabilities in comparison with a focus on resources or utility.^[7]

Sen proposes that poverty should be considered in the space of capability and functionings (they are the same space), rather than in the space of income or resources, Rawlsian primary goods, utility, or happiness. Sen has persuasively set out the advantages of doing so—rather than measuring poverty in the space of resources or utility—along the following lines.^[8]

The traditional approach to measuring poverty focuses on the resources people command. The most common measures of resources by far are monetary indicators of income or consumption. In some approaches resources are extended to include social primary goods.^[9]

While resources are clearly vital and essential instruments for moving out of poverty, Sen's and others' arguments against measuring resources alone continue to be relevant.^[10] First, many resources are not intrinsically valuable; they are instrumental to other objectives.

Although resources may not be sufficient to assess poverty, indicators of resources—of time, of money, or of particular resources such as drinking water, electricity, and housing—remain important and are often used to proxy functionings (at times adjusted for some interpersonal variations in the conversion of resources into functionings) and to investigate capability constraints (Kuklys 2005; Zaidi and Burchardt 2005). Thus a conceptual focus on capability poverty may still employ information on resources, alongside other information.

Utility, happiness, and subjective well-being form another and increasingly visible source of data and discussion on many topics, including poverty.^[11] Thewelfare economics advanced by Bentham, Mill, Edgeworth, Sidgwick, Marshall, and Pigou relied on a utilitarian approach. Sen criticized the regnant version of utilitarianism in economics for relying solely upon utility information (rather than seeing well-being more fully), for focusing on average utility (ignoring its distribution) and for ignoring process freedoms.

BOX 1.2 (cont.)

because, as Sen observed, 'utilitarianism was for a very long time the "official" theory of welfare economics in a thoroughly unique way' (2008).

Taking psychic utility as a sufficient measure of well-being (and its absence to measure poverty) has practical problems for poverty measurement. Sen observed that happiness could reflect poor people's ability to adapt their preferences to long-term hardships. Adaptive preferences may affect 'oppressed minorities in intolerant communities, sweated workers in exploitative industrial arrangements, precarious share-croppers living in a world of uncertainty, or subdued housewives in deeply sexist cultures'. The measurement issue is that these people may (rather impressively) 'train themselves to take pleasure in small mercies'. This could mean that their happiness metrics would not proxy capabilities and functionings: 'In terms of pleasure or desire-fulfilment, the disadvantages of the hopeless underdog may thus appear to be much smaller than what would emerge on the basis of a more objective analysis of the extent of their deprivation and unfreedom' (2009: 283).^[12]

Recent empirical research on happiness has enriched the field of measurement, and Sen's work has developed accordingly. Put simply, he argues that happiness is clearly 'a momentous achievement in itself'—but not the only one.

Happiness, important as it is, can hardly be the only thing that we have reason to value, nor the only metric for measuring other things that we value. But when being happy is not given such an imperialist role, it can, with good reason, be seen as a very important human functioning, among others. The capability to be happy is, similarly, a major aspect of the freedom that we have good reason to value. (2009: 276)

This discussion is of direct relevance to measures of well-being, perhaps more so than poverty measurement. For example, the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission Report (2009) included subjective well-being as one of the eight dimensions of quality of life proposed for consideration.

While a complete analysis of poverty and well-being requires insights on people's resources and psychological states as well as their functionings and capabilities, the oversights that purely resource-based or purely subjective measures have for such analyses remain salient, and will be further discussed in Chapter 6. be transparent and informed by public debate and reasoning: ‘The connection between public reasoning and the choice and weighting of capabilities in social assessment is important to emphasise' (2009: 242).

Another critical issue is how to reflect the freedom aspect of capabilities. For example, in selecting the indicators of capability poverty it is normally more possible to measure or proxy achieved functionings than capabilities (opportunity freedoms). While initially this was considered a severe shortcoming there are also well-developed arguments for doing so. For example, Fleurbaey (2006b) observes that group differences in functionings may suggest inequalities in capabilities (cf. Dreze and Sen 2013). Also, functionings may be particularly relevant for some people such as small children and those with intellectual disabilities. Measuring capabilities could require counterfactual information on ‘roads not chosen', and may depend in part on families and social forces, both of which complicate the empirical task.¹⁵ However, Chapter 6 suggests conditions under which a multidimensional poverty measure using functionings data may be interpreted as a measure of capability deprivation or unfreedom (Alkire and Foster 2007). So, multiple empirical routes to considering freedom may be explored.

Using the capability approach to motivate poverty measurement also draws attention to aspects beyond capability deprivations such as agency and process freedoms, and plural principles (Sen 1985,2002). For example, the capability approach sees poor people as actors, so poverty measurement must be compatible with, if not actively facilitate, their agency in their own lives as well as in the struggle against poverty. An example of plural principles is how Sen urges a reformulation of sustainable development, so that the environment is not only valued as a means to human survival (although it is that) but also as a location of beauty, of commitment, and of responsibility to future generations and to other life forms (2009: 251-2).

In sum, as we stated earlier, multidimensional poverty measurement engages, fun­damentally, a normative motivation that is shared across a wide range of conceptual frameworks. The capability approach is a prominent framework among them. Consider­ing multidimensional poverty to be capability deprivation has a number of implications for measurement, which we have sketched here.

1.2