Housing Insecurity Measure, a Development of a Validated Scale Using Household Data

Abstract

Based on the literature analysis, housing insecurity does not have a universally validated measure or scale that can be used across societies and contexts to measure housing insecurity. The literature on housing and housing insecurity is marred with individualised preferences of what individual researchers or organisations appropriate to measure housing insecurity. This paper takes the first step of proposing a scale of measuring housing insecurity that can be adopted for any context be it in developed countries or developing societies. The paper recognises the economic thinking that claims that the tools of mathematics are not always appropriate in the analysis of social reality (Lawson 2015) hence cognisance of the fact that functions and calculus are not always the best, this paper still makes use of mathematical calculations involving weights and still relies on the development of constructs that can be useful in explaining the reality of housing insecurity. We ask the question, to what extent is the ontology of housing so abstract that the numbers can be misleading? It is argued in this paper that the conception of reality and hence housing insecurity can still depend on the mathematical tools to understand the ontology of housing insecurity. Going deeper this paper does not claim to belong to the pluralism, or neoclassical thought, but as anticipated, devoid of that discourse and make use and hence benefit from both mainstream economic theory and aspects utilised by the pluralist school of thought and hence makes reference to the ontology of economics.

The common characteristics of employment status during the Covid-19 Lockdown

“…The literature review is based on the theories of poverty as the link to the both the conservative and the liberal understanding of causes of poverty, Although the analysis does not dwell on poverty but it is implied within the paper that employment is linked to access to income and hence a way to alleviate poverty. The link between poverty and income is ubiquitous in the literature (Assaad et al, 2002;Dunga, 2019;W. Grobler, 2015;W.…”

“…These six goals are on poverty, food security or hunger, health, education, gender and sanitation. Poverty as defined in the literature is generally a deprivation to the basic needs of life (Dunga, 2019;Mdluli & Dunga, 2021;World Bank, 2020a) In order for households to avoid deprivation of the basic needs, they need an income as most of these basic needs can be bought from a market place. In mostly developing countries households depend on subsistence farming, and their income is received from selling the surplus produce.…”

Housing insecurity during the Covid-19 pandemic

“…The MPI considers three dimensions as making up the poverty construct, namely health, education and living standards (Alkire et al, 2020). Dunga (2018Dunga ( ,2019Dunga ( , 2021 uses a metaphor of an animal with many heads to paint a multidimensional picture of poverty. He argues that all the heads (dimensions) of poverty have the ability to keep the poverty animal alive.…”

“…Considering housing insecurity as a leg in the living standards head is a complete misdiagnosis (Dunga, 2021). Housing insecurity is therefore highly important and relevant in the process of dealing with poverty globally and at national levels.…”

“…And What are the determinants of housing insecurity at Household level? The household housing insecurity index (HHII) proposed by Dunga (2021) proposes 8 dimensions that should be included in the calculation of the household's exposure to housing security or insecurity thereof. The index argues that Housing insecurity falls on a continuum as opposed to a binary understanding.…”