Essay
Exam Poverty, Well-Being & Social Justice
Eindessay voor het vak Poverty, Well-Being & Social Justice. Eveneens te gebruiken voor andere vakken in antropologie en eventueel sociologie of politicologie.
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Voorbeeld van de inhoud
Take Home Exam Hugo HuijbersPoverty, Well-Being & Social Justice 4069773
BA3 Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies
2012-2013
Assignment 1
Poverty is a multidimensional concept, as we have seen during the lectures of the course
Poverty, Well-Being & Social Justice. In these lectures several poverty models, each with
different subcategories, were showed and discussed. The background idea that formed the basis
for these models was to give people a broad, but complete overview of what the concept of
poverty is. For that reason it is relevant to view diverse subfields of poverty to make a significant
measurement of the problem in its specific context.
In this poverty line, made by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), the recent poverty
situation in the Netherlands is examined and chronicled. The CBS only uses income and capital
data to examine the recent poverty situation in the Dutch society. To explain these statistical data
and clarify some trends there only gave several social reasons to underline them. The best
example of such a social reason is the pronounce of several, so called risk groups, among the
Dutch citizens (ethnic minorities, elderly etc.). Thus, the CBS report gives almost exclusively a
financial examination of the Dutch poverty situation, which is very one-sided when we compare
this with other recent poverty models and debates. i
An example of a multidimensional and much discussed poverty model is the
Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI). This model is made by the Oxford Poverty & Human
Development Initiative (OPHI) and embraces three subcategories: 1. Education, 2. Health and 3.
Standard of Living. So on, the OPHI tries to give a clear overview of the poverty situation in a
certain country. The most relevant principle of this model is that the individual or micro poverty
level is converted to the (inter)national or macro poverty level. ‘’The MPI assesses the nature
and intensity of poverty at the individual level, with poor people being those who are multiply
deprived and the extent of their poverty being measured by the extent of their deprivations.’’ii
The specific way in which the MPI is developing a poverty rate is by capturing how many people
experience overlapping deprivations (incidence), and how many deprivations they face on
average (intensity). The MPI is very extended and forms an indicator to show how the
,composition of multidimensional poverty changes for different regions, ethnic groups etc.. It
provides grips to enhance policy and so on, the MPI goes further than most of the other poverty
lines. Based on the MPI, people are poor as they score a high rate in at least one third of the
weighted indicators to measure poverty.iii
As we compare the MPI with the Dutch CBS report it is striking that de MPI makes no
use of income data. The answer here is short and compact: income data are gained by using
different surveys, which often do not have information on subfields like health and nutrition. For
that reason it is not measurable which people are income poor and also deprived in the other MPI
indicators. Coming back on the resources which the MPI gives for policy designing the
interconnections between these deprivations are very relevant. In fact, these interconnections are
enabling policymakers to target resources and design policies more effectively, which cannot be
said of the Dutch CBS report. The CBS report is simply too one-sided and only focused on
income poverty, to make some interconnections with other fields of policy making.
I would like to bring in another relevant measurement of poverty, namely the Human
Development Report (HDR). The HDR is part of the United Nations Development Program
(UNDP) as a way to measure the development in a country. The HDR is an annual coming back
report which is subdivided in three subcategories: health, knowledge and standard-of-living. The
final note is the average of these three categories and gives an indication of the situation of well-
being in the certain country.iv The HDR is based on the capability approach of the Indian
economist Amartya Sen, who is discussed during the lectures. With his pioneering ideas
Amartya Sen was the former of a completely new perspective on well-being, conceptualized as
choices and opportunities and not with income and living standard as basic principles. Central
point of Sen’s approach is the term functioning, which is meaning every simple aspect in an
individual’s life that is relevant for the notion of well-being. Each of these aspects or dimensions
can assume different operating or functioning levels. A second key term in Sen’s approach is
capability, which means the sum of all the operating levels defined under functioning.v vi vii
As we take the country profile of the Netherlands here and compare this with the CBS
report there are several large differences between these two examinations of the Dutch poverty
situation. In general, the Human Development Index (HDI) considers income as one of the
indicator of poverty, but maybe the least important.viii The HDI mostly zooms in to the situations
of health and education, which are underlined as the main indicators of poverty. Further on, we
, can also denounce some similarities between the two poverty reports. As we focus on the
separate rating the HDI counted for income in the Netherlands it is eye-catching that this is the
lowest of three (next to health and knowledge). This is illustrating for the imagine that was also
described in the CBS report, namely that of an strongly subdivided society with huge differences
between the social levels. However, this is not confirmed by leading commentary in the report
and can also caused by the economical crisis in which Western Europe is. The general end rating
of the Netherlands is undoubtedly excellent. ‘’ Netherlands's HDI is 0.910, which gives the
country a rank of 3 out of 187 countries with comparable data. The HDI of OECD as a region
increased from 0.749 in 1980 to 0.873 today, placing Netherlands above the regional average.’’
In short, as we come back to the question why the Dutch CBS report is not realistic in the
context of poverty measurement, it is clear that the report is too one-sided and does not reflect
the multidimensional concept of poverty as such. I tried to examine, with the MPI and HDI
reports, that poverty is more than only income, which is stressed in the CBS report. In fact,
income statistics are only an indicator to measure poverty, but not the interpretation of the whole
concept. I hopefully illustrated that the MPI, but mostly the HDI with the report of the Dutch
poverty situation, gives a complete overview of poverty in a certain region.
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