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)

Abstract

Edited volumes have low prestige in economics. Fortunately, the anthology Dimensions of Poverty. Measurement, Epistemic Injustices and Social Activism, compiled by Valentin Beck, Henning Hahn, and Robert Lepenies (2020), proves that edited volumes can be more than a loose collection of chapters unworthy of becoming journal articles. The editors have produced an important collection of 20 chapters around the conceptualization, understanding, and measurement of poverty, which brings together debates from economics, philosophy, political science, public policy, and sociology. The outcome is more than simply the sum of its parts: there is something to be learned both from individual chapters and, specially, from their cross-fertilization.The volume is concerned with the conceptualization and measurement of poverty. Yet, this topic is placed within the context of two other important and timely debates (see Figure 1). First, the volume establishes a link between the quality of poverty research and the perspectives that feed into it. A central theme here is epistemic injustice following Fricker (2007): it is argued that Global South perspectives are often undervalued or outright ignored. 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. Second, the volume discusses how the way in which academics conceptualize, define, understand, and measure poverty has important implications for the actual lives of people living in poverty. In the words of one contributor, "[c]onceptual issues are not merely abstract and fringe discussions; they have an impact and influence on how reality is perceived, how it is shaped and how it should be changed. Concepts drive actions" (Schweiger, 2020, p. 163).On the topic of poverty, the anthology brings good and bad news. The bad news first: there will never be a definitive answer to the question of how to conceptualize or measure poverty, and we will never be done researching poverty. There are too many dimensions to poverty, too many normative judgments to be

High-resolution rural poverty mapping in Pakistan with ensemble deep learning

“…While definition and measurement of poverty remains contested [ 28 ], we use a poverty measure based on household assets, which is both conceptually robust and practical. This approach builds on the ‘basic needs’ concept that constitutes the primary framework for defining national poverty lines [ 29 ].…”