Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Poverty Measurement, Epistemic Injustices and Social Activism

Abstract

As we enter the 2020s, global poverty is still a grave and persistent problem. Alleviating and eradicating poverty within and across the world's societies requires a thorough understanding of its nature and extent. Although economists still standardly measure absolute and relative poverty in monetary terms, a consensus is emerging that poverty is a socially relational problem involving deprivations in multiple dimensions, including health, standard of living, education and political participation. The anthology Dimensions of Poverty advances the interdisciplinary debate on multidimensional poverty, and features contributions from leading international experts and early career researchers (including from the Global South). This introductory chapter gives an overview of formative debates, central concepts and key findings. While monetary poverty measures are still dominant in public and academic debate, their explanatory power has been drawn into question. We discuss relevant criticisms before outlining the normative concepts that can inform both multidimensional poverty and monetary measures, including basic capabilities, basic needs and social primary goods. Next, we introduce several influential multidimensional poverty indices, including the Human Development Index and the Multidimensional Poverty Index. The anthology shows in detail how such measures can be improved, from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. It shows that there are different methods of poverty research that require further investigation, including participatory studies, (value) surveys, public consensus building, the constitutional approach, and financial diaries. Finally, we show that there is an ongoing problem

Citizen Science for Transformative Air Quality Policy in Germany and Niger

“…The biggest air quality challenge in Niamey, Niger is related to the need for clean indoor cooking fuels, an issue intimately related to multidimensional and energy poverty [31]. At the national level, the Enquête Nationale sur les Conditions de Vie des Ménages et l'Agriculture (ECVM/A), also known as the National Household Living Conditions and Agriculture Survey (conducted in 2011 and 2014) is instructive here [32,33].…”

Socioeconomic Development on Poverty Alleviation of Women Entrepreneurship

“…Tackling poverty would require narrowing the characteristics of poverty while simultaneously ascertaining to identify poor persons within the population; with abundant definitions and notions accessible in literary writings authored by a diverse range of scholars, poverty shaped into four core ideas: monetary, capability, social exclusion, and participatory (Beck, Hahn, & Lepenies, 2020;Kwadzo, 2015;Madanipour, Shucksmith, & Talbot, 2015). Some definitions in this section include setting a financial poverty level and setting out poverty in an all-encompassing manner.…”

Poverty Research and its Discontents: Review and Discussion of Issues Raised in Dimensions of Poverty. Measurement, Epistemic Injustices and Social Activism(Beck, V., H.Hahn, and R.Lepenies eds., Springer, Cham, 2020)

“…This is at the detriment of research quality because, in the view proposed, poverty research must carefully consider particular societal contexts. Hence the inclusion of scholars from diverse backgrounds and with society‐specific knowledge “is not only a question of fairness (…) but also highly instructive” (Beck et al ., 2020, p. 11). Various contributions also emphasize the importance of the views of those who live in poverty themselves, as well as of those who work in policy‐making and poverty reduction outside academia.…”