Re-reporting, editing, comment by Carolyn Bennett
“Economic unfreedom, in the form of extreme poverty, can make a person a helpless prey in the violation of other kinds of freedom… [The] 1970s were probably the golden years of social choice theory across the world. … The constructive possibilities that the new literature on social choice produced directed us immediately to making use of available statistics for a variety of economic and social appraisals: measuring economic inequality, judging poverty, evaluating projects, analyzing unemployment, investigating the principles and implications of liberty and rights, assessing gender inequality…” Amartya SenThirty years later —
More than three quarters of the world’s people are desperately poor in education, health, and living standards—“multidimensionally poor”
The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the United Nations Development program Human Development Report (UNDP HDR), identifies people who contend with multiple deprivations across three dimensions: education, health, and living standards. A person is identified as multidimensionally poor if the person experiences deprivation in at least 30 percent of the weighted indicators. One deprivation alone may not represent poverty.
The latest Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) is estimated for 104 countries representing 5.2 billion people, 92% of the population of developing countries and 78.5% of the world’s population (2007). Its findings in brief —
1.7 billion people (32%) are identified as multidimensionally poor.
51% of the MPI poor people live in South Asia, 28% in sub-Saharan Africa.
Countries with the highest incidence of poverty tend to have the highest intensity of poverty.
Countries do not need to have reached middle-income status to have low MPI.
Among the 93 countries for which income poverty data are published, the incidence of MPI poverty is higher than $1.25/day for 57 countries; lower than $1.25/day for 36 countries. This means that a number of countries, which have succeeded in reducing monetary poverty, still face massive challenges in other dimensions of deprivation.
Multidimensional poverty varies across region and ethnic group, in Kenya, e.g., —
60% of people are deprived on average
Among the Masai, 96%
Among the Kikuyu, 39%
Eight States of India have an MPI above 0.32; they are home to 421 million people — more people than the 26 African countries that also have an MPI above 0.32 (410 million).
Composition of multidimensional poverty varies:
Nutritional deprivations among the multidimensionally poor, e.g., are highest in South Asia.
Sources and notes
Nobel Prize Award Ceremony Amartya Sen lecture, Autobiography, http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1998/sen-autobio.html
The 2010 MPI forms a baseline for subsequent work. It is based on the latest data that was publicly available in January 2010 from three sources: Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), and the World Health Survey (2003). Subsequent HDRs will include updated MPIs. However, the overall data availability is surprisingly weak, underlining the importance of efforts to improve the coverage and regularity of such information.
More and better data are needed. Categories of critical information that is missing in surveys and reports are quality of education, work, empowerment, information on consumption and violence. http://www.ophi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/MPI-One-Page-final.pdf
National Multidimensional Poverty Measures: The international MPI was devised as a tool to compare acute poverty across nations. The MPI approach can usefully be adapted using country-specific data and indicators to generate richer national multidimensional poverty measures that reflect local cultural, economic, climatic and other factors. Mexico, Bhutan and Colombia have developed, or are developing, their own national multidimensional measures with indicators and cutoffs tailored to their context and goals.
The MPI was developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the United Nations Development program Human Development Report (UNDP HDR) to develop ideas and policies that can improve people’s lives.
The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), established in 2007, is an economic research centre led by Sabina Alkire, within the Oxford Department of International Development at the University of Oxford. OPHI’s work is grounded in Amartya Sen’s capability approach — OPHI works to implement this approach by creating real tools that inform policies to reduce poverty. http://www.ophi.org.uk/about/
In 2001 Jonathan Steele wrote in the Guardian (UK), “[Amartya Kumar] Sen is a rare example of an intellectual who has had a major effect on politics. His work on the causes of famine changed public perceptions by showing why thousands might starve even when a country's food production has not diminished, and his analysis of poverty has been enormously influential. Arguing that simple measures of GNP were not enough to assess the standard of living, he helped to create the United Nations’ Human Development Index, which has become the most authoritative international source of welfare comparisons between countries. As Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, since January 1998, and the first Asian to head an Oxbridge college, Sen is also deeply immersed in the debate over globalization.” [“Food for thought,” March 31, 2001, http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/mar/31/society.politics]
Amartya Kumar Sen (b. 1933) is an Indian economist who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory, and for his interest in problems of society’s poorest people. Sen was best known for his work on the causes of famine, which led to the development of practical solutions for preventing or limiting the effects of real or perceived shortages of food. He is currently the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. [Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amartya_Sen]
Sabina Alkire directs the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), is a Research Associate at Harvard, and Secretary of the Human Development & Capability Association (HDCA). Her research interests include multidimensional poverty measurement and analysis, welfare economics, the capability approach, the measurement of freedoms and human development. Publications include ‘Valuing Freedoms: Sen’s Capability Approach and Poverty Reduction’, as well as articles in Philosophy and Economics. She holds advanced degrees in Economics and Economics for Development. http://www.ophi.org.uk/about/people/current-people/sabina-alkire/
See also: “Three hundred million people suddenly added to global poverty statistics in November as United Nations Development Programme launches a new poverty index)” (‘Why 300 million more people are suddenly poor’, Christian Science Monitor, November 17, 2010), Between the Lines (December 15, 2010-week ending December 24, 2010), in the week’s summary of under-reported news, http://btlonline.org/2010/101224-btl.html
_________________________________________________
Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]_________________________________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment