1.2.2 OF THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS IN BENIN, GABON, GUINEA, LIBERIA, AND MALI
Marco Pomati and Shailen Nandy
INTRODUCTION
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) succeeded in focussing and sustaining global attention on the issue of extreme poverty and its correlates in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). The 2015 target date has passed, with UN agencies, governments, and civil society organisations reporting varying degrees of success in meeting set targets;
unsurprisingly, not all MDGs were met everywhere. There were differing rates of progress and success. As regards MDG 1, the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger1, success at a global level was claimed (Pinkovskiy and Sala-i-Martin, 2010; Chandy and Gertz, 2011; United Nations, 2015), not least because of the remarkable rate of poverty reduction in East Asia over the last 30 years. Sceptics, however, have questioned the metrics (Reddy and Pogge, 2002; Vandemoortele, 2002;
Townsend et al., 2006) arguing that poverty estimates in many countries are of questionable reliability, given the quality of data on which they are based (Jerven, 2013). In addition to the issue of data quality is the issue of how poverty is measured and defined. Townsend succinctly summed up the link between poverty definition, measurement and the development of policy.
Any statement of policy to reduce poverty contains an implicit if not explicit explanation of its cause. Any explanation of poverty contains an implicit prescription for policy. Any conceptualisation of poverty contains an implicit explanation of the phenomenon. (1979: 64)
1 http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/poverty.shtml, accessed March 4, 2019.
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How we define poverty reveals what we think its cause(s) to be and thus, what solutions are needed to tackle it. Narrow definitions of poverty, focusing solely on economic resources or material circumstances, will suggest a very different set of anti-poverty policies than broader definitions, which identify structural processes, power imbalances, and the deprivation of basic material and social needs (Lister, 2004, Alcock, 1993). Townsend’s work on poverty and deprivation shaped international and official definitions and agreements on poverty, from the UN to the EU (Townsend, 1993). In arguing that poverty was a relative concept, and defined with reference to time and place, he argued that comparable, reliable, valid and socially realistic measures of poverty could be developed and applied across high, middle and low-income countries (Gordon and Nandy, 2016).
In this chapter we show a practical method to achieve precisely this for child poverty as conceptualised in the rest of the chapters in this book, using data from household surveys in Benin, Gabon, Guinea, Liberia, and Mali.
EVOLVING DEFINITIONS AND MEASURES OF POVERTY
The history of scientific research on poverty, conducted in both rich and poor countries, is long (Booth, 1893; Rowntree, 1901; Naoroji, 1901).
While many early studies equated poverty with insufficient resources to maintain minimal or basic levels of subsistence, significant academic work over the past half-century, by sociologists like Townsend (1954, 1970, 1979) and economists like Sen (1987, 1999), have demonstrated that poverty must be measured by much more than simply the ability to feed oneself and one’s family. People, wherever they are in the world, value being able to participate in social activities and norms. Recognition of the importance and impact of exclusion from social norms or customary activities (Chase and Walker, 2013) led to the expansion of definitions of poverty in order to incorporate aspects of social participation, which early studies neglected. Concepts and definitions of poverty now routinely acknowledge that it needs to be measured relative to time and place rather than simply using a fixed low income (Anand et al., 2010).
Official European definitions of poverty have long made clear its relativity; in 1975 the European Council defined poverty as “individuals
Measuring Multidimensional Poverty 101 or families whose resources are so small as to exclude them from the minimum acceptable way of life of the Member State in which they live”
(Council Decision, 1975). The definition was updated in 1985, with clarification that “resources” which people required were more than solely financial: “the poor shall be taken to mean persons, families and groups of persons whose resources (material, cultural and social) are so limited as to exclude them from the minimal acceptable way of life in the Member state in which they live” (EEC, 1985). Other international definitions of poverty, such as that adopted by 117 governments at the 1995 World Summit on Social Development (WSSD) also reflect the relative nature of poverty, making reference to minimally acceptable standards of living (i.e. going beyond a set basket of goods). The WSSD defined “overall poverty” as:
…lack of income and productive resources to ensure sustainable livelihoods;
hunger and malnutrition; ill health; limited or lack of access to education and other basic services; increased morbidity and mortality from illness;
homelessness and inadequate housing; unsafe environments and social discrimination and exclusion. It is also characterised by a lack of participation in decision-making and in civil, social and cultural life. (United Nations, 1995).
Equally applicable to both high and low-income countries, it provides the theoretical and methodological basis for comparable, relative measures of poverty.
Despite these internationally agreed definitions, most studies and estimates of poverty in low-income countries and regions continue to rely on minimal or absolute measures (Iliffe, 1987; Hall and Midgley, 2004).
Official poverty lines traditionally use calorie monetary measures based on 19th century understandings of minimum nutritional needs, and thus fail to reflect important non-material, social or participation dimensions of poverty, or even the need for an adequate and nutritionally balanced diet. Studies often rely on data about economic activity or productivity which, for many countries in Africa, are known to be seriously flawed (Jerven, 2013). Whereas a range of alternative indicators have been developed, such as the UNDP’s Human Poverty Index (UNDP, 1997) and its successor, the Multidimensional Poverty Index (Alkire and Santos, 2010), the use of these new scales have been limited, either because of their reliance on aggregate data, and/or because they have been criticised on methodological and conceptual grounds (McGillivray, 1991; Gordon and Nandy, 2012).
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In the past decade or so, efforts have been made to expand the definition and measurement of poverty, using relative and non-monetary measures (Statistics South Africa, 2012; INSAE, 2007; Kingdon and Knight, 2006; Klasen, 2000; Sahn and Younger, 2010), but these were limited to a handful of countries, or limited by a reliance on aggregated national level data. Thus, it remains the case that a majority of poverty studies, which adopt a relativist approach, have been conducted in middle and high-income countries; studies of poverty in Africa and Asia continue to use absolute approaches and indicators, with lower thresholds devised by experts in entirely different contexts and times.
Another change in the way poverty is measured has been through the growing use of welfare outcome indicators, which reflect and relate to people’s actual living conditions or standards in contexts of poverty (Alkire and Santos, 2010). As such, measures to reflect the quality of peoples’ dwellings, levels of overcrowding, access to basic services like water, sanitation, healthcare and education, all of which are central to internationally accepted definitions of poverty, now form the basis of many national and international poverty studies, including ones like UNICEF’s recent Global Study of Child Poverty and Disparities (Fajth et al., 2012), which has been conducted across 45 countries. The widening of definitions and measures has meant that poverty, in its different manifestations, can be reflected in a more nuanced manner, so that studies can now use a variety of methods and tools to reflect the different dimensions of poverty. Although the breadth and depth of the indicators used to build these measures vary significantly, what is certain is that academics, researchers and policy makers all acknowledge the value of moving beyond a reliance on out-dated, narrow, solely money-metric measures (World Bank, 2016). The time has come for a change in the way poverty in low income countries is defined and assessed, and for tried and tested methods used successfully in rich countries to be applied in an appropriate manner to improve poverty measurement globally. Extreme poverty for the purposes of the MDGs was narrowly defined, using the World Bank’s so-called “dollar a day” indicator; the same narrow indicator has been retained for target 1.1 of the first SDG, which is: “By
Measuring Multidimensional Poverty 103 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day.”2
Of interest for poverty researchers is SDG target 1.2, which is: “By 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions.”3 Two indicators are proposed for this SDG target: 1.2.1 measures “the proportion of population living below the national poverty line, by sex and age” and 1.2.2 looks at “the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions”.
While much in this is familiar (i.e. a focus on low income, and the use of national poverty lines), target 1.2 nevertheless presents a real opportunity to fundamentally change the way global poverty is conceptualised and assessed. Not only does it call for separate poverty estimates for children and adults, it also determines that the levels of poverty be reflected on more broadly, in all its dimensions, and importantly, according to national definitions. Collecting data to meaningfully monitor target 1.2.2 will be a challenge, given how broadly poverty could be defined “in all its dimensions,” across nearly two hundred countries. However, for many years, poverty researchers have developed and been using methods, which can do just this.
THE CONSENSUAL APPROACH TO POVERTY MEASUREMENT
Townsend’s seminal work Poverty in the UK (1979), and his theory of poverty as relative deprivation, has formed the basis for many modern studies of poverty, including the 2012 study Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK.4 Building on Townsend’s work, Mack and Lansley (1985) developed and implemented what is now called the Consensual Approach (CA). Their aim was to seek public consensus about what was an unacceptable standard of living (in the UK), and to discover if anyone fell below that standard. Their contribution, and methodological innovation, was to give the public a voice in the process of defining what poverty was, and in doing so, suggesting how it might be measured. They demonstrated
2 http://indicators.report/targets/1-1/, accessed March 4, 2019.
3 http://indicators.report/targets/1-2/, accessed March 4, 2019.
4 www.poverty.ac.uk, accessed March 4, 2019.
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that the public were unanimous about the fact that minimum standards of living needed to go beyond basic food and shelter, to include elements such as social activities and cultural/civic participation. Using focus groups of the public to devise a list of items and activities which everyone in the UK was expected to be able to own or do, and not be prevented from owning or doing due to a lack of resources, Mack and Lansley developed a questionnaire which asked a nationally-representative sample of respondents which items and activities they considered “were necessary and which all people should be able to afford, and which they should not have to do without.” Respondents were also asked about whether they owned/did the items/activities on the list, and if not, if it was because they did not want them, or because they could not afford them. Respondents unable to afford to own/do items/activities considered “necessary” by most respondents (i.e. 50 percent or more) were considered deprived of social perceived necessities (SPNs). SPNs were produced for both individuals and households.
Mack and Lansley’s work made a significant impact, inspiring similar studies around the world. They demonstrated that there was a high degree of consensus about what constituted minimally acceptable standards of living and SPNs across different social and economic groups, and also that a significant proportion of people in Britain lacked these because they could not afford them: 13.8 percent, 7.5 million people, were deprived of three or more necessities (1985). The establishment of SPNs through the Consensual Approach, however, was not without its critics.
For example, Walker (1987) argued the set of items respondents are asked to rate are unlikely to be an exhaustive list of every item and activity which people deem essential. Moreover, he argued that surveys are limited in their ability to reflect socially perceived items. This can only truly happen when respondents are given the opportunity to “…listen to the views of others and to discuss “with them” (1987: p. 219) and not through an individually-administered questionnaire. He therefore argued for the use of qualitative techniques to explore the validity of the consensual approach as well as establishing a definition of poverty. More recently McKay (2004) challenged the idea that the Consensual Approach studies show actual consensus about which items people should have.
Indeed, “majoritarian” might be a more accurate way of describing this approach; McKay argued that consensus implies that the clear majority of
Measuring Multidimensional Poverty 105 respondents would identify exactly the same set of items as necessary or not necessary, whereas Mack and Lansley’s approach has the more modest aim of establishing which individual items are endorsed by the majority. Moreover, as Walker pointed out, input from other methodologies apart from social surveys is indeed important, and social scientists should strive to include in social surveys a wide range of goods and services, which the population can decide to endorse, or not. Despite these potential issues, it is hard to deny that establishing a range of possession, goods and services, which most adults, regardless of education, social and cultural backgrounds, endorse as necessary, can at least contribute to the articulation of a concept of poverty; which is underpinned by the concepts of democracy and citizenship (Veit Wilson, 1987).
To date, the Consensual Approach has been applied successfully in several high-income countries including all 28 European Union countries (EUROSTAT, 2012), as well as in national studies in Belgium (Van den Bosch, 2001), Finland (Halleröd et al., 2006), Sweden (Halleröd, 1994;
Halleröd, 1995), Japan (Abe and Pantazis, 2013) and Australia (Saunders, 2011). Researchers have also applied the approach in a series of LMICs including Bangladesh (Mahbub Uddin Ahmed, 2007), Benin (Nandy and Pomati, 2016), Vietnam (Davies and Smith, 1998), Mali (Nteziyaremye and MkNelly, 2001), Tanzania (Kaijage and Tibaijuka, 1996), South Africa (Noble et al., 2004, Wright, 2008) and Zimbabwe (Mtapuri, 2011). More recently (2016/2017), countries as geographically diverse as the Solomon Islands and Tonga in the South Pacific, and Uganda in Africa, have run consensual poverty question modules in national household surveys. Researchers will consequently be able to analyse data on socially perceived necessities alongside information about household income and expenditure, as has been done elsewhere (Halleröd et al., 2006; Pantazis et al., 2006).
While each of the studies run in low-income countries has successfully demonstrated the merits of the Consensual Approach, each is only a single country study; what would be valuable in assessing whether the Consensual Approach would be a useful method for collecting data is to monitor progress towards SDG 1.2 as a cross-national study, which uses the same (or similar) survey instrument across a set of low-income countries. Such data would show whether consensus exists
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across societies about what people consider to be essential/necessary for a “decent” standard of living, or in the words of the SDGs, what poverty
“in all its dimensions” looks like. This could then form the basis of a nationally agreed, democratic definition of multidimensional poverty, which is what SDG target 1.2 requires.
CROSS-NATIONAL, COMPARATIVE DATA ON SOCIALLY PERCEIVED NECESSITIES
The theoretical basis and key assumptions of the Consensual Approach were set out above. We can now show, using data collected by World Bank-funded national surveys, how the Consensual Approach can be used to demonstrate consensus both across and within countries about socially perceived necessities. We have previously detailed (Nandy and Pomati, 2016) how data from the 2006 EMICOV (INSAE, 2007) survey for Benin can be used to develop an index of socially perceived necessities (SPNs), which can then be used to assess the extent and patterning of multidimensional poverty. We subsequently discovered that a similar module of questions on subjective poverty was also distributed in other countries, as part of the Core Welfare Indicator Questionnaire programme (CWIQ) (Ajayi, 2006). These countries included Benin (2006), Gabon (2005), Guinea (2007), Liberia (2007, 2010), and Mali (2006). Data from these surveys was not freely available in the way DHS or MICS data are, and so accessing the data was only made possible through the kind collaboration of staff in the national statistical offices of Liberia and Mali.56
The CWIQ surveys investigate peoples’ living conditions with regards to the following themes: clothing; food; housing; health care;
transport; work and education; and leisure. These are all areas that a meaningful multidimensional measure of poverty would need to reflect.
The 2016 report of the Global Commission on Poverty agrees on a similar list of themes that should serve as a starting point, including nutrition,
5 We would also like to acknowledge the kind support of UNICEF country offices in Mali and Liberia in helping us get access to the data.
6 Full details about the CWIQ surveys in each country can be obtained from the International Household Survey Network (IHSN, www.ihsn.org/), where all metadata (questionnaires, sampling details, etc.) and other relevant information about these surveys is deposited.
Measuring Multidimensional Poverty 107 health status, education, housing, access to work and personal security (World Bank, 2016: p. 158). The CWIQ survey asks respondents two key questions about a list of items:
Do you feel that the following items are necessary to maintain a minimum standard of living?
Are you satisfied that your household meets minimum needs such as ...?
Responses to these questions can be used to gauge: (i) what people in different countries think is necessary for a minimum standard of living;
(ii) whether there is consensus across and within countries about what constitutes a minimum standard of living; and (iii) to what extent people are deprived of a socially-defined minimum standard of living.
The bar charts presented below (Chart 1) show responses from research participants in five West African countries ― Benin, Guinea, Gabon, Liberia, and Mali ― about whether each item/activity is necessary to maintain a minimum standard of living. Items are grouped according to the themes discussed above. Note that not all countries asked questions for all items, and so there are gaps in the charts.
Chart 1: Clothing and household items
108 Pomati & Nandy Food-related items and activities
Education and work
Transportation
Measuring Multidimensional Poverty 109 Basic services
Health and hygiene
Source: Authors' estimates based on CWIQ surveys
While the items in these particular surveys were not categorised or grouped in terms of the constitutive rights of poverty used in the other chapters in this volume, it would be very simple to design questionnaires that would specifically capture what people7 actually consider important as a minimum to satisfy those rights. Moreover, what these charts demonstrate is that there is consensus across countries about these items, with near unanimous agreement about what contributes to a minimum standard of living. Over 70 percent of respondents reported that each of these items are necessities. The one exception is Gabon, where less than 50 percent reported that being able to eat cereals/tubers/rice every day was in fact not necessary.
While international consensus is clearly a target, it is also important
While international consensus is clearly a target, it is also important