Abstract
Many widely used poverty measures generate inconsistency and incoherence because of their failure to be adequately grounded in a conception of what ultimately matters and why. Obscurantism in relation to underlying values is the ultimate source of the observed difficulties. Only poverty measures that are consistently grounded in a suitable value framework can provide a sound basis for public discussion and decision-making. Practical methods for implementing such an approach exist.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
From the Latin obscurus, meaning dark or clouded.
- 2.
See e.g. D’Ancona (2017). Propaganda, not to mention fibbing, are of course concepts with long histories much preceding the coining of the term “post-truth”.
- 3.
The essays in Kirchin (2013) take up various sides of the pursuant debate. Many of the criticisms of the concept of entanglement of fact and value (see e.g. Simon Blackburn’s “Disentangling Disentangling” in this volume) focus on the appropriate characterization of the relationship between fact and value without contesting that they do come together within particular concepts.
- 4.
- 5.
Income refers here not merely to money income used in market transactions, but more generally to command over commodities, however achieved—including through state or social provision or other means.
- 6.
- 7.
See e.g. Deaton and Kozel (2005).
- 8.
- 9.
See Fisher (1997) for the history of the Official U.S. Poverty Measure and its origins in the “Orshansky Poverty Thresholds”.
- 10.
- 11.
See e.g. City of New York (2018) for one response. The Supplementary Poverty Measure, reported by the U.S. Census Bureau since 2011, makes some allowance for regional variation in costs, in addition to other adjustments to the Official Poverty Measure, but also does not provide an anchoring in a clear evaluative framework.
- 12.
- 13.
These include “housing and domestic fuel”, “household goods and services”, “clothing”, “personal goods and services”, “transport”, “food and drink” and “social and cultural participation”. For details regarding the construction of the Minimum Income Standard, see Davis et al. (2016).
- 14.
See Box 1 in Davis et al. (2016).
- 15.
Canada’s” Market Basket Measure” provides another example of an effort that has attempted to identify minimum costs through detailed specification of goods and services necessary for minimal achievements in various aspects of life.
References
Booth, Charles. 1902. Life and labour of the people in London. London: Macmillan.
City of New York. 2018. New York City Government Poverty Measure, 2005–16. Mayor’s Office of Operations, The City of New York. www1.nyc.gov/site/opportunity/poverty-in-nyc/poverty-measure.page. Accessed 20 June 2018.
D’Ancona, Matthew. 2017. Post-truth: The new war on truth and how to fight back. London: Ebury Press.
Davis, Abigail, Katherine Hill, Donald Hirsch, and Matt Padley. 2016. A minimum income standard for the U.K. in 2016. Joseph Rowntree Foundation. https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/minimum-income-standard-uk-2016. Accessed 20 June 2018.
Deaton, Angus. 1997. The analysis of household surveys: A microeconometric approach to development policy. Washington, DC: The World Bank.
———. 2004. Measuring poverty, Princeton Research Program in Development Studies Working Paper. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=564001 or https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.564001. Accessed 20 June 2018.
Deaton, Angus, and Jean Dreze. 2010. Nutrition, poverty and calorie fundamentalism: Response to Utsa Patnaik. Economic and Political Weekly 45: 78–80.
Deaton, Angus, and Kozel Valerie, eds. 2005. The great Indian poverty debate. New Delhi: Macmillan.
Fisher, Gordon M. 1997. The development of the Orshansky poverty thresholds and their subsequent history as the official U.S. poverty measure.. https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/1997/demo/orshansky.pdf. Accessed 20 June 2018.
Jorgenson, Dale W. 1998. Did we lose the war on poverty? Journal of Economic Perspectives 12: 79–96.
Kirchin, Simon, ed. 2013. Thick concepts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Patnaik, Utsa. 2006. Poverty and neoliberalism in India. Rao Bahadur Kale Memorial Lecture at Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune, revised and expanded. www.macroscan.org/anl/jan07/pdf/Poverty_Neoliberalism.pdf. Accessed 20 June 2018.
———. 2007. Neoliberalism and rural poverty in India. Economic and Political Weekly 42: 3132–3150.
Planning Commission. 1979. Report of the task force on projections of minimum needs and effective consumption demand. Perspective Planning Division, Planning Commission, Government of India, New Delhi.. http://planningcommission.nic.in/aboutus/taskforce/tsk_mneff.pdf. Accessed 20 June 2018.
———. 1993. Report of the expert group on estimation of proportion and number of poor. Perspective Planning Division, Planning Commission, Government of India, New Delhi. http://planningcommission.nic.in/reports/publications/pub93_nopoors.pdf. Accessed 20 June 2018.
Pogge, Thomas, and Sanjay G. Reddy. 2006. Unknown: Extent, distribution and trend of global income poverty. Economic and Political Weekly 4: 2241–2247.
Putnam, Hilary. 2002. The collapse of the fact/value dichotomy and other essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Reddy, Sanjay. 2004. A capability-based approach to estimating global poverty. UNDP International Poverty Centre, In Focus 4: 6–8. http://ipcig.org/pub/IPCPovertyInFocus4.pdf. Accessed 25 October 2019.
———. 2007. Poverty estimates: How great is the debate? Economic and Political Weekly 42: 491–496.
———. 2013. The Emperor’s new suit: Global poverty estimates reappraised. In Poor poverty: The impoverishment of analysis, measurement and policies, ed. Jomo K. Sundaram and Anisuzzaman A. Chowdhury, 87–110. London: Bloomsbury.
———. 2018. From principles to practice: A method for identifying income sufficiency when applying international legal standards, ESS-Working Paper 61. Social Protection Department, ILO, Geneva. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3229464. Accessed 20 June 2018.
Reddy, Sanjay, and Rahul Lahoti. 2016. $1.90 a day: What does it say? The new international poverty line. New Left Review 97: 106–127. https://newleftreview.org/issues/II97/articles/sanjay-reddy-rahul-lahoti-1-90-a-day-what-does-it-say
Reddy, Sanjay, and Thomas Pogge. 2010. How not to count the poor. In Debates on the measurement of global poverty, ed. Sudhir Anand, Paul Segal, and Joseph E. Stiglitz, 42–85. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rowntree, Benjamin S. 1901. Poverty: A study of town life. London: Macmillan.
Sen, Amartya. 1983. Poor, relatively speaking. Oxford Economic Papers 35: 153–169.
Subramanian, S. 2012. The poverty line. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-poverty-line-9780198086086?cc=us&lang=en&
Triest, Robert K. 1998. Has poverty gotten worse? Journal of Economic Perspectives 12: 97–114.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Reddy, S.G. (2020). Poverty: Beyond Obscurantism. In: Beck, V., Hahn, H., Lepenies, R. (eds) Dimensions of Poverty. Philosophy and Poverty, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31711-9_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31711-9_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-31710-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-31711-9
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)