Francesco

Conversion Rates: A Measurement Problem

In Chapter 4, Sen alerts the reader to discrepancies between the traditional conception of income-based poverty and a capability-based approach to understanding poverty, noting that the former cannot properly account for situations in which income inequality is not the only factor limiting capabilities. Sen goes on to give various examples of “spaces” where income is an inadequate measure for freedom—the handicapped, gender preferences within families, relative wealth, and so on. He considers the massive unemployment in Western Europe, lack of health care in the United States despite higher incomes, and low rates of literacy in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa to all be markers of non-income poverty. Sen does not attempt any weighing of freedoms in Chapter 4; he notably mentions that “[he has] also not attempted to produce an “aggregate” measure of deprivation, based on “weighting” the different aspects of capability deprivation. A constructed aggregate may often be far less interesting for policy analysis than the substantive pattern of diverse performances” (Sen 103). Although he later points to democracy and public discourse as the appropriate arena for determining which freedoms ought to preside over the others (if at all), I can’t seem to get past the hurdle of calculating the various paths to increased freedom in separate cases.

As Sen notes, there are all sorts of factors affecting how one garners freedom in any given situation. Social exclusion can be seen as a form of poverty, but how do we determine exactly what basket of goods an individual in Missouri needs to avoid ostracism? Sure, she might a need a cellphone, but what kind? A smartphone? An Apple smartphone? Will any car suffice? Or does it need to be a model newer than 1995? I know that data collection and surveys are immensely powerful in giving answers to such questions, but wouldn’t we need a team of researchers to visit every small town in the world for a minimum of a few days to determine such specifics? If it were a collective effort, we could envision mass volunteering as was done with the Cuban Literacy Campaign over the course of 1961. Is this sort of data collection necessitated by Sen’s argument or am I missing something?